
ffl^OTusuUL 




FOUR PASTORATES. 



GLIMPSES OF THE 



LIFE AND THOUGHTS 



Eden B.Foster, d. d 



CONSISTING OF A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, EULOGIES, 
AND SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS. 



3Etrftetr fcg Iifs Son 




LOWELL, MASS/** 

PUBLISHED BY GEORGE M. ELLIOTT. 

I88 3 . 






THE LIBRARY 
OF COMOREf t 

WASHINGTOHJ 



Copyright, 1883, 
By Addison P. Foster. 



Vox Populi Press : 
H u se, Goodwi n & C< 
Lowell, Mass. 



Jo/^d-iceclior), 



TO 

THE FOUR CHURCHES OF CHRIST 

WHOM 

lEtstn aiurrouflhs jFoster 

SERVED IN HIS LIFE, ■ 
AND WHOSE 

Ldve and. C □ £i p er atinn 

DID SO MUCH TO MAKE 

HIS FORTY YEARS IN THE MINISTRY 

HAPPY AND EFFICIENT, 

THIS VOLUME 

IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
BY HIS ,SOX. 



PREFACE 



This book originated in a widespread desire among Dr. Foster's 
friends and former parishioners, to have a mental photograph of one 
loved and revered. The controlling aim on its every page has 
therefore been to make a fitting memorial. The John-street Church, 
of Lowell, with which more than half of Dr. Foster's forty years 
in the ministry were spent, wishing for some memento of their 
beloved pastor, concluded to assist in the publication of this book, 
rather than to place a marble tablet on the walls of their house 
of worship. They regarded that which should reproduce the inner 
life of their departed teacher, as the most becoming tribute to 
his memory, and one which would bring the most comfort to 
themselves. It was with this feeling that they appointed a 
Committee of Publication to assume financial charge of the work. 
A desire to represent Dr. Foster's methods and mental peculiari- 
ties, in their large variety, has governed the selection of addresses 
and sermons found in this volume. These are inserted primarily 
from their biographical interest. 

At the same time it has been felt that this book might be made, 
and should be made, of practical value to pastors and churches 
who had no personal acquaintance with him it commemorates. 
Dr. Foster's thought took a wide range, and he was wont to 
express himself clearly and forcibly on a great number of 
topics. His experiences, as a clergyman, pertained to city and 
country, to times of peace and times of war, to periods of 
political strife and national discussion. He was an eminently 
cautious, wise, and far-seeing man. He was one whose sympa- 



4 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

thies were keenly enlisted in many directions. In consequence, 
his utterances, as recorded here, on ministerial responsibilities 
and methods, on the Christian life, on character, on national 
affairs, on literature, biography, history, education, theological 
thought, and many other themes, will, it is believed, prove 
suggestive and stimulating to those to whom this volume can 
have no value as a memorial. 

The editor of this work desires to express his grateful 
acknowledgments to the Publishing Committee appointed by the 
John-street Church, Rev. H. T. Rose and Messrs. S. G. Bailey, 
J. S. Colby, G. M. Elliott, G. C. Osgood, R. L. Read, J. L. Sargent, 
G. H. Stevens, A. K. Whitcomb, and A. B. Woodworth; aud 
especially to Messrs. George M. Elliott, treasurer, and John S. 
Colby, secretary, on whom the chief burdens of conducting the 
business have fallen; to the ten gentlemen who became financially 
responsible for the book; to the friends who contributed appre- 
ciative letters of reminiscence ; to the two clergymen whose eulo- 
gies form a marked feature of the volume ; to his mother and 
sister, whose assistance in editing the volume has been invalua- 
ble ; and to the many whose interest and substantial aid have 
made this volume possible. 

It may be added, that should sufficient encouragement be re- 
ceived, it is in contemplation to issue in one or more volumes, 
some of those sermons which Dr. Foster preached in connected 
courses, on which he put his best work, and which excited 
special interest among his hearers. 

ADDISON P. FOSTER. 
Jeksey City, N. J. 



CONTENTS 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

I. Introductory. 
Why This Life is Written Page 9 

II. Parentage, Birth, and Boyhood, 1813-31. 

His Birth-place — Parents — Richard Foster — Mrs. Irene B. Foster — 
Rev. Eden Burroughs, d. d. — Brothers and Sister — Consecrated to the 
Ministry — Boyhood — At School — Social Enjoyments — Debating Club — 
Life on the Farm — Selling Cattle — Fishing and Hunting — Breaking 
Roads in Winter — Letter from Rev. Davis Foster — Letter from Rev. R. 
Baxter Foster — Letter from Rev. Amos Foster . Page 10-25 

III. As Student and Teacher, 1831-40. 

At Kimball Union Academy — Conversion and Profession of Faith — 
Preparation for College— Scholarship — Sickness in Dartmouth College — 
Football — Letter from Pres. S. C. Bartlett, d. d. — Walking Home — 
Teaching in Sabbath School — Boarding Himself — In Family of Rev. 
Amos Foster — Letter advising him not to enter the Ministry — Address 
on Temperance — College Friendships — A Moving Sermon — Everett's 
Orations — Graduation — Letter from Hon. James Barrett on his Life in 
College — Address at Graduation — Teaching at Pembroke and Concord, 
N. H. — Learning to Sing — At Andover Theological Seminary — Engaged 
to be Married — Again at Pembroke — Married Page 25-40 

IV. Pastorate at Henniker, N. H., 1841-47. 

A Candidate — Ordained and Installed — Description of Henniker — 
Birth of Children — Letter from Mrs. Horace Childs — Exchanges at 
Pembroke — Love for Family — Love for Souls ■— Training of Children — 
Anxiety for Brothers — Revival at Concord — At Saratoga Springs — 
Delegate to General Assembly — Views on Slavery — Drs. Robert and 
William Breckenridge — Responsibilities of Ministry — Report on his 
Church — Resigning Pastorate Page 40-54 

V. Pastorate at Pelham, N. H., 1847-53. 

Ministerial Credentials — Adrift — Anxieties — Candidate at Pelham, 
N. H. — Settlement — Description of Pelham — Old Church Edifice — 
Salary — Interest in Family — Books Desired — Birth and Death of Chil- 
dren — Call to Lawrence, Mass. — Call to Lowell, Mass. — Letter from 
Rev. Augustus Berry Page 54-64 

VI. First Pastorate in Lowell, Mass., 1853-61. 

How He Came to Go to Lowell — Description of Lowell — John-street 
Church — Labors in the Ministry — Extra-parochial Work — Newspaper 
Articles — Temperance Sermon — Congregational Churches and Pastors 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



in Lowell — Antislavery Agitation — Kansas Troubles — Assault on 
Sumner — John Brown's Raid — Pastoral Work — Love of his People — 
Their Moral Support — Calls from Other Churches — Call to Northampton, 
Mass. —To Columbus, O. — Revival at John-street Church — Birth ana 
Death of a Son — Devotion to his Children — Advice to a Daughter — 
Biographical Reading — Vacation — Beauties of Western Massachusetts 

— Ruskin — Rev. Bennett Tyler, d. d. — Loneliness — Letter to a Little 
Daughter — Address at Dartmouth College— Labors in Sermon-writing — 
Reviewing Life — Autumn — College Life — Election of Lincoln — Fore- 
bodings of Civil War — Accident at Pemberton Mills — 111 Health — Pen 
Paralysis — Leaving Lowell Page 64-102 

VII. . Pastorate in West Springfield, Mass., 1861-66. 

City and Country Pastorates — Made Doctor of Divinity — Installed at 
West Springfield, Mass. — Description of the Place — Pastors in West 
Springfield — Cordial Reception — Joy in his New Home — Happiness of 
Old Age — Ministerial Labors — Sermons to Young Men — A Call to the 
Ministry — Memories of John-street Church — Letter to a Deacon — The 
Civil War — Influence in Procuring Enlistments — Biographies of Soldiers 

— Dislocation of the Arm — Extemporaneous Preaching — Gift from his 
People — Lectures at Teachers' Institutes — Revival — Themes of Ser- 
mons in Revival — Exhaustion — At Saratoga— Revivalists — Commence- 
ment at Dartmouth College — Council at Washington, D. C. — Gardening 

— Pear-culture — Criticism of Preaching — Biographies of Christian 
Women — Relations of Father and Daughter — Trials of Life — Loneli- 
ness — Influence of Learning — Interest in his Son — Objects in Life — 
Fable of Skiouri — Death of his Eldest Daughter — Leaves West Spring- 
field — Letter from J. Newton Bagg, Esq Page 102-142 

VIII. Second Pastorate in Lowell, Mass., 1866-78. 

Returning to a Former Pastorate — His Son Settled beside Him — Death of 
his Father — Fishing at York, Me.— Anxiety for his Children — Impaired 
Health — A Wedding Party — A New Home — Work on Sermons — Con- 
vention of Y. M. C. A. — Temperance in Massachusetts — Rev. Mr. Earle's 
Evangelistic Labors — Scenery at York. Me. — Fishing — An Eclipse and 
a Rainbow — Three Baccalaureate Sermons — Illness in Early Life — 
Outside Work — Letter to Saratoga — White Mountain Experiences —His 
Garden — Ministerial Association — Subjects of Sermons — Desirable 
Books to Read — A Minister's Responsibility — A Minister's Difficulties 

— Church Bepairs — Changes in the Pastorate — Taine's English Litera- 
ture — Estimate of Beecher — Revival — In the White Mountains — The 
Theatre — Miss Smiley's Meetings — Modern Skepticism — A Thanksgiv- 
ing Remembrance — A Pastor's Letter — The Eminent Dead — Corres- 
pondence on Charles Sumner — Unable to Preach — A Six Months' Vaca- 
tion—East Burke, Vt. — Law of Heredity — Description of a Brook; 
of a Sunrise — Mountain Scenery — Reading in Vacation — Rangeley 
Lakes — Preaching in Vacation — Verne, Morris, and Hedge — An Asso- 
ciate Pastor — Dean Alf ord — Immorality of Infidels — A Year of Rest — 
Studying at Home — Labor and Capital — Love for Family and Church — 
Godly Men — Jersey City — Prayer Meetings — Relations of New York 
and New England — Interest in Newspapers — Uses of Affliction — 
Religious Reading — Love for his Daughter — Novel Reading — Letter 
from a Parishioner on his Singleness of Aim in the Pastorate — Resign- 
ing the Pastorate — Pastor Emeritus — Letter from Hon. George Stevens 

in Review of This Period Page 142-205 

IX. As Pastor Emeritus, at Lowell, Mass., 1878-82. 

Unable to Preach at All — Preparing Works for the Press — Cessation of 
Correspondence — Theological Ruts — Philosophical Reading — Anxieties 
about the Future — At the Seashore — Meeting of American Board — 
President Garfield and Other Presidents — Woman — Insincerity in the 
Pulpit — Ability of the Evangelical Ministry — Phillips Brooks — Garden 
at Lowell — Reminiscences — Liberalism — Hon. Thomas Corwin — 
Religious Biographies — Evils in the Country — Assassination of Garfield 

— Transcendentalism — Love among the Puritans — Sabbath-school 
Superintendent— Letter of Consolation — Relations to Associate Pastor — 



CONTENTS. 



Letter from Eev. J. B. Seabury — His Physicians — Last Sickness — Kind- 
ness of his People — Last Hours, and Death Page 205-231 

X. Characteristics. 

Literary Tastes — Habits of Beading — Criticism on Choate — List of Books 
to be Bead — Newspaper Clippings — Letter Writing — Method of Sermon- 
izing — Preaching Old Sermons — Bewriting Sermons — Amount of 
Work in the Ministry — His Illustrations and Unction— His Public Prayers 

— His Ideas of tlfe Ministry — Interest in Politics; in Temperance; in 
Antislavery — Love for Young Men — His Emotion, Energy. Humility, 
Affectionate Nature, Charitv, Piety — List of his Special Public Efforts — 
List of Published Sermons and Addresses Page 231-250 

EULOGIES. 

I. Dr. Street's Euneral Address. 

Prefatory Note Giving Account of Funeral Services — Different Kinds of 
Light — Light of Good Men— Dr. Foster's Early Home — Influence on 
Brothers — His Modesty, Earnestness, Piety, Laboriousness — His Style 

— His Humor — Aptness in Use of Illustration — A Personal Tribute. 

Page 251-261 

II. Dr. Greene's Memorial Address. 

Prefatory Note Giving Sabbath-school Memorial Service — Dr. Foster's 
Eloquence — His Courage — His Genius of Labor Page 262-271 

DR. FOSTER'S SELECTED SERMONS AND ADDRESSES. 

I. The Eloquence of Expiring Nations. 

Prefatory Note — Eloquence of Death — Supernatural Energy of Gifted Men 
at Death of Nations — Components of a Nation's Eloquence — Lack of 
Eloquence in Times of Prosperity— In Times of Despair the Eloquence 
of Begenerating Genius Page 271-275 

II. The Dull Scholar. 

Prefatory Note — 1. Educate through the Agency of the Senses — Use of the 
Eye in Learning — Patrick Henry — Lord Erskine — Dr. Channing — 
Daniel Webster — John and John Quincy Adams — 2. Educate through 
the Imagination — Characteristics and Dangers of the Age — 3. Educate 
according to Mental Peculiarities — Importance of a General Education 

— Arouse Dormant Faculties — Parent's Ignorance of his Child — Self- 
distrust — Sympathy of the Teacher — Possibilities of a Child Not 
Precocious Page 276-291 

III. Reading. 

Prefatory Note — I. Classification of Books: A Selection Necessary — 1. Bibli- 
cal and Theological — Value of the Bible — 2. Historical and Biographical 

— Interest of History; of Biography — 3. Poetical and Miscellaneous — 
Shakespeare — Novels — Newspapers and Beviews — Evil Literature — 
Ethics and Philosophy — Public Libraries — Books which have Influenced 
Eminent Men — II. Advantages of Beading: 1. Counteracts Influence of 
Mechanical Agencies — 2. Method of Mental Culture — Value of Beflec- 
tion — Beading Secures Familiarity with Great Minds — Besponsibility of 
the Press — 3. Adds a Charm to £he Home — A Mental Discipline — 
Increases Sympathy— Home Influences — 4. Prepares for Old Age — The 
Occupation of Betirement — The Beauty of a Thoughtful Old Age, Page 292-312 

IV. Temperance. 

Prefatory Note — Moderate Drinking — The Bum-seller's Mistake — Eela- 
tions of Temperance to Woman — Health as Affected by Alcohol — Prac- 
tical Measures in Curing Intemperance — Prohibition — The Bum of 
Intellect from Alcohol Page 313-326 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



V. Sources of Pulpit Power. 

Prefatory Note — 1. A Believing Spirit — Excitements of the Age — Rational- 
istic Tendencies — Worldliness — 2. Consecutive Thought — Rules of 
Reasoning — The Forms of Truth— Freshness of Theology — Dr. Griffin's 
Park-street Lectures — 3. Independent Thought — Relation of Indepen- 
dent Thinkers — Dependence on Others' Thoughts — Correct Thinking — 
Danger of Eccentricity — Progress in Theology — 4. Simplicity of Style — 
No Literary Ambitions — Sensationalism — 5. Loyalty to Truth — The 
Ruling Motive — Faith in the Right — Patience — Sense of Responsibility, 

Page 327-349 

VI. Charles Sumner. 

Prefatory Note — 1. His Integrity —Aims — High Principles — 2. His Scholar- 
ship — Interest in History and Literature — His Illustrations — A Practi- 
cal Man — Influence in Destroying Slavery — 3. A Jurist — Knowledge of 
Constitutional and International Law — 4. A Popular Teacher — In Euro- 
pean Society — The Lecture — 5. A Hero and Martyr — His Objects in 
Congress — Election — Assault by Brooks — Medical Treatment. 6. Source 
of His Attainments and Usefulness — His Youth — 7. His Divine Appoint- 
ment Page 350-368 

VII. Review of the Year 1873. 

Prefatory Note — 1. France — Fall of Napoleon III — Six Factions — The 
Commune — Lack of Faith — Disregard of the Sabbath — Religion in 
United States — 2. Italy — Historical Resume — A Religious War — Bible 
in Schools — 3. Spain — State Control of Schools — The V irginius — 4. Tur- 
key — Christianization — 5. Death of Louis Agassiz and John Stuart Mill 

— Evil of Free Thinking Page 369-388 

VIII. Methods of Christian Culture. 

Prefatory Note — Love for God: I. Reasons for it — II. How Maintained: 

1. By Perseverance — 2. By Christian Fellowship — Conversation of 
Christians — 3. By a Holy Life — 4. By Prayer for the Spirit . Page 389-402 

IX. Peace Like a River. 

Prefatory Note — I. Two Characteristics of the Peace of God: 1. Its Abun- 
dance — Doubts in the Religious Life — Last Days of the Righteous — 

2. Its Mystery — Mystery of the Ocean — No Objection to Mystery — 
II. Methods of Obtaining Peace: 1. By Faith — 2. By Recognizing Per- 
sonal Responsibilities — 3. By Piety Page 403-416 

X. The Bible as an Educating Power. 

Prefatory Note — 1. The Bible Secures a Competence — Prosperity of England 
and united States — 2. The Bible Instructs and Exalts the Mind — Its 
Style — Its Supernatural Element — 3. The Bible Fits for Patriotic Duties 

— Its Revelations of Law, Freedom, Human Rights — Demands of Patriot- 
ism Page 417-430 

XI. The Death of the Christian. 

Prefatory Note — Interest in the Christian's Death-bed — I. Distressing Fea- 
tures: 1. Physical Pain — 2. Separation from Friends — 3. Sometimes 
Sudden and Unexpected — Can Sickness be Avoided? — 4. Sometimes 
Shrouded in Spiritual Darkness — II. Joyful Characteristics: 1. Closes 
the Conflict with Sin — 2. Brings Enlargement of Mind — 3. Removes 
Hindrances to Successful Action — 4. Introduces to the Blessedness of 
Heaven — Heaven, the Fellowship of Saints and Communion with Christ, 

Page 431-444 

Index 445 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

By Rev. Addison P. Foster, Jersey City, N. J. 



I.— Introductory. 

The biography of a faithful pastor is not an exciting tale. 
Ordinarily the years pass in simple and quiet routine. The 
lives of most ministers are as much alike in their general 
outline, as the successive ranges of the Alleghanies, that lie in 
parallel lines across northern New Jersey. Why, then, attempt 
the biography of another minister, when so many have already 
been written? Because Doctor Foster was a man widely 
known and loved, and his many friends desire this Memorial 
for their personal gratification ; because, further, it is believed 
that his life was exceptional, — not in its outline, but in its 
finish. He of whom we write was in many respects a model 
for imitation. There are man}^ others whose names are more 
widely known, others of larger accomplishment ; but none, we 
believe, of a higher ideal, of a fuller consecration, of greater 
faithfulness. He was a rare example of Christian manliness, 
of ministerial earnestness, of devotion to his family and 
friends. His external life may be like that of others, but 
the thoughts, emotions, and purposes that flowed through 
that life are so pure and beautiful as to be distinctive and 
worthy of record. And his life has one further element of 
unusual interest : it was a constant battle and a constant 



10 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

triumph, — a battle with disease and despondency; a triumph 
of the soul within, sustained by a high and holy resolve, over 
the disabilities of an enfeebled body. In this his experience 
was like that of Richard Baxter. 

It is proposed to make these "memorials of a quiet life" as 
far as possible autobiographical. Out of a large collection of 
letters, written in the utmost freedom to wife and children, to 
parents, brothers, sisters, and friends, copious extracts will be 
made. These will picture the inner life, which is the main 
thing to be brought to view, far better than any descriptions 
from the pen of another. Iti so doing, however, it is impos- 
sible to avoid many references to family friends and items of 
domestic concern, which in a biography differently planned, 
would be irrelevant, if not impertinent. It is trusted that 
such references will be pardoned, as essential to the preserva- 
tion of the vitality of the quotations. 



II. — Parentage, Birth, and Boyhood. 

1813 — 1831. 

Eden Burroughs Foster was born May 26, 1813, in Han- 
over, N. H., in that part of the town known as the Centre. 
Hanover lies in the northern part of New, Hampshire, on the 
Connecticut River. It rises abruptly from the river into high 
hills, which are cut here and there by deep ravines, and which, 
though generally topped with granite and exposing on their 
sides broad surfaces of slate, yet furnish on their flanks some 
admirable grazing farms. On the south side of the town lies 
Hanover Plain, a broad sandy expanse on which Dartmouth 
College is located. Five miles northward is Hanover Centre, 
a street of houses, with church and school-house, running north 
and south on a narrow, elongated plain. Near the eastern 
boundary of the town is Moose Mountain, a considerable eleva- 
tion, extending six or eight miles, and, with its forest-clad sum- 
mits, the principal feature in the landscape. Hanover was 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 11 

founded in the latter part of the last century, mainly by a colony 
from Connecticut, whose chief purpose was to establish a school 
for Indian youth in what was then a wilderness. In 1813 it 
was far removed from the great centres, and then, as now, under 
the dominant influence of the college. It was a place of con- 
stant struggle for the necessities of life, and of consequent 
self-denial, but it was also a place of unusual intelligence and 
love of learning. In 1849, Mr. Foster prepared a list of those 
born in and around Hanover Centre who had entered a pro- 
fessional life. He was able to name of such seventy-nine, and 
of these thirty-five had received a college education. 

Eden's parents were Richard and Irene Foster. His father, 
Richard, was born in Salisbury, N". H., and was the son of 
Richard and Sarah (Greeley) Foster, the latter being distantly 
related to Horace Greeley. After the father's death, his son 
Eden wrote of him as follows : — 

"The family, of English origin, was originally located in 
Salisbury, Mass. At the age of twenty, Richard Foster re- 
moved to Hanover, "N. H. His early opportunities of school 
instruction were small. Yet from childhood he was a quick 
and thorough scholar in all elementary branches, a lover of 
such books as were within his reach, a keen observer of events 
passing around him, and an original thinker. At the age of 
twenty-one he gave himself to the service of Christ. He then 
adopted the old Puritanic faith, both religious and political, 
and he adhered to those convictions to the end. He was a 
hater of tyranny in all its forms. . He had a manly integrity 
without a stain ; a consecration to Christ without a doubt ; 
a benevolence which was self-sacrificing, and which never 
wearied. He lived in Hanover from the age of twenty to 
the age of sixty-five, a father in the church, a friend of schools, 
consulted widely for his soundness of judgment, trusted of the 
town in public affairs, honored of all for his unswerving up- 
rightness ; ready for every good work, energetic in whatever 
he undertook, giving more than a tithe of all that he possessed 
for Christian charities and for public order. 

" He commenced his life on a farm, which was under a heavy 
incumbrance of debt. He redeemed it from its liabilities only 
by severest retrenchment, and by persevering, wearing toil. 
He was crippled in one of his hips at the age of twenty, by 



12 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

the assault upon him of a drunken neighbor, who in the insanity 
of his passion, awakened by drink, came near murdering his 
own wife, and then turned his vengeance upon the young man 
who sought to rescue her life. Disabled by this life-long lame- 
ness, he never relaxed the most diligent and even energetic 
manual toil for fifty years. At last entirely crippled, so that 
for ten years he could not walk ten rods at a time, and often 
subjected to acute neuralgic pains, he maintained a perfect pa- 
tience, and still kept up his familiarity with books, and with 
public events of current interest. 

"Perhaps his most remarkable trait was his wise devotion 
to the welfare of his children. He early determined to give 
them a liberal education. To this all plans and all toils were 
made to bend. Anxieties were nothing, fatigues were nothing, 
surrender of comforts was nothing, if this desire could be con- 
summated. All products of the farm, all increase of values 
springing from the growth of the country, all returns of a busy 
brain devising improvement, were consecrated to this end. 
Through all struggles and difficulties, his convictions of the 
value of an education never wavered. His parental love and 
his indomitable will held on. The farm was swept into this 
vortex. His plans for old age, for a day of sickness, for per- 
sonal enjoyment, were all laid on this altar. His strength pre- 
maturely gave way. But no doubt clouded his mind, and no 
faltering marked his steps, as he pursued this one end. 

" He had eleven children, ten sons and one daughter. Two 
of his sons he buried in infancy. He lived to see seven of them 
graduates from Dartmouth College ; six of them entering the 
ministry, and one the profession of law. Three of these sons 
were officers in the Union army, and two of them were killed 
in battle." 

To this it should be added, that the daughter received a 
liberal education, and for many years held prominent positions 
as an instructor of youth. In a similar strain, towards the close 
of Richard Foster's life, his son wrote to him as follows : — 

"I adore and wonder and praise God when I think of the 
history of the past. I thank you once more for your love and 
care of me ; for your forecasting plans and fatherly instruc- 
tions ; for your self-sacrifices on my behalf ; for your energetic 
endurance, your persevering will, your magnanimous accom- 
plishment. I have no words to express my admiration of many 
of the traits of character which you have exhibited in the past, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 



— the robust, vigorous, self-poised mind, the stainless integrity, 
the tireless industry, the unswerving adherence to principle, 
the self-denial, the surrender of inferior, time-serviug, money- 
getting ends, for the intellectual culture and spiritual welfare 
of your children, and for the salvation of souls. 

"I admire and wonder when I reflect upon the interposi- 
tions of the divine Providence in the history of our family. 
My parents lived a life of privation and exhausting toil. With 
their capabilities of mind and action, they might have schemed 
for wealth and material comfort, and have been successful. 
Their hopes, their ambitions, their loves, their plottings, were 
all swallowed up in the moral and mental progress of their 
children. The combination of qualities in the matrimonial 
union of the father and the mother, was remarkable. It was 
the stalwart strength and health of a working, out-door life ; 
it was the energetic, unconquerable soul of a Puritan man- 
hood, joined to the keen, disciplined intellect and the sensitive 
nerves of a studious life." 

The mother, of whom the son speaks thus in this last sen- 
tence, was Irene, daughter of Rev. Eden Burroughs, d. d., and 
Abigail (Davis) Burroughs. Dr. Burroughs was born in Strat- 
ford, Conn., Jan. 19, 1738, was graduated from Yale College 
in 1757, and received the honorary degree of doctor of divinity 
from Dartmouth College in 1806. He was ordained pastor in 
Killingly, Ct., in 1761, but accompanying his friend, President 
Wheelock, of Dartmouth College, to Hanover, he served as 
pastor at the Centre from 1773 till 1809, and after that date 
as pastor at Dartmouth College and Hartford, Vt., till he died. 
His death took place in 1813, in Hartford, Vt. For forty years 
a trustee of Dartmouth College, and a faithful and able min- 
ister, he was long a tower of strength in the region where he 
spent the most of his life. His daughter Irene was a remark- 
able woman. An obituary notice, written by her eldest son, 
speaks of her as follows : — 

" The youngest child of her parents, the staff of their old age, 
the solace of all their cares, she was trained to the most affec- 
tionate and intimate communion with them in their studies 
and domestic plans, their views of men and life, their patriotic 
aspiration, and their religious hopes. 

il The reading of solid books and conversation with thinking 



14 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



minds early became the chief pastime of her life, and so con- 
tinued unto the end. There were but two things which she 
loved more than her books, — her family and her Saviour. 
Neither hunger, nor sleep, nor rest, could draw her off from 
her reading, but at any moment, and with willing alacrity, she 
would leave her books to promote the comfort of her family, 
or to -enjoy a season of prayer. 

"Her mind possessed great activity and comprehensiveness. 
She could soar with Milton, in his sublimest thoughts ; she 
could commune with Locke, in his deepest metaphysics ; she 
could range with Edwards, in his widest generalizations ; 
she could sympathize with Dwight, in his most practical en- 
forcements, — but of all authors, Cowper, with his home sym- 
pathies, his rural delights, his quick and delicate sense of all 
gentle affections, his heart turning constantly to God, his stead- 
fast and lofty maintenance of all principles of rectitude, was 
her favorite, as expressive of those tastes and thoughts which 
were most congenial to her own mind. 

"Her heart was full of compassionate, generous emotion. 
No tale of grief could be repeated or read in her hearing, 
which did not touch the fountain of tears ; no spectacle of 
distress could be witnessed by her, which did not elicit her 
instant and earnest efforts for its removal. In her devotion to 
the welfare of others, she was singularly oblivions of self, 
shrinking from no toil, refusing no sacrifice or self-denial, 
wearied by no vigils, troubled by no fatigues, if she might sup- 
ply a want, or mitigate a sorrow, or relieve a pain. She was 
deeply interested for the prosperity of the church, for the 
welfare of the country, for the salvation of the heathen. 
No missionary or philanthropic effort failed to awaken her 
profoundest sympathy. No account of revivals, or of the 
conversion of the impenitent, was heard by her without deep 
thankfulness. Her piety controlled, and elevated, and beauti- 
fied all her character. The Bible was her constant companion 
and guide, its precepts dwelling ever in her thoughts, its 
promises hid in her heart. She estimated all other books 
according to their conformity to, or departure from, this 
standard. Christ was her hope, His anointing blood her 
constant plea before the throne. 'A sinner saved by grace' 
was her self-estimate in life, her trembling, confiding, grateful 
trust when she passed into the Dark Valley and the gathering 
shadow. 

"Her children rise up and call her blessed. Never will the 
memory of her affection and fidelity, her example, her instruc- 
tive conversation, her prayer and holy teachings, shed like the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 



sunlight and the dew upon all their life, fade from their minds. 
Never will the power of her lovely and lofty faith cease to 
distil blessings upon her kindred and friends who shared her 
counsels, and who witnessed the light of her heavenward 
course." 

A letter written to Mr. Foster's father about the same time 
with this notice, gives further information. 

" Mother's character was one of rare and peculiar excellence. 
In her, the intellectual, the sensitive, and the imaginative were 
remarkably combined. Reason, affection, and fancy were her 
leading traits. Her mind was active, acute, thoughtful, pene- 
trating, retentive. There was no subject of study which did 
not interest her, and to the understanding of which, if time 
and opportunity had been given her, she was not competent. 
Her knowledge was wide, her imagination buoyant and diver- 
sified, her love deep and strong. 

" I think she had great versatility of talent, a prolific, exu- 
berant genius, and, with her means of culture, one of the best 
disciplined and best informed minds I have ever seen. Toils 
and vigils were sweet to her, if accompanied by intelligence 
and thought. With her tastes for abstract thinking, with the 
deprivations of poverty endured by her and her husband 
through all their life, and with eight tearing boys turning the 
house upside-down every other hour, it is not to be thought 
strange if the most perfect order was sometimes impossible. 
But she had the power of self-oblivious toil ; she had the fac- 
ulty of labor and sacrifice and endurance, of earnest, perse- 
vering, tireless effort for the good of others, as much as any 
person I have ever known. 

" I need not say that her piety was a quality which was never 
secondary or subordinate in her character. Conscience ruled 
over all; Faith was the basis of all her plans, and hopes, and 
joys. Her reverence for the Bible, for the Sabbath, for the 
institutions and doctrines of the Gospel, her devotion to Christ 
and His cause, were sentiments which grew with her growth 
and strengthened with her years. They accorded with the 
deductions of her reason, with the conscious wants of her soul, 
with the blessed experiences which had been vouchsafed to her 
of the power of religion. Her piety was humble, self-distrust- 
ful, unostentatious, to a very great degree, and probably as far 
as was possible in consistency with her decision of mind and 
her intense and quenchless zeal for the triumphs of truth and 
the salvation of souls. I believe that she would have perished 



16 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

unblenchingly at the stake, to attest her love for Christ, and yet 
she would not have gone into the next room to make known 
any act of piety, but would rather have shrunk with the most 
anxious sensitiveness from the communication of her good 
deeds. Heaven was her home, and earth was to her a place of 
exile, and yet she was not tired of life. She desired to live, 
God willing, for her heart was bound up in her family, and it 
was a heart that loved with no stinted measure." 

Mrs. Irene B. Foster was an omnivorous reader. While her 
sons were in college, they were accustomed to bring her books 
every week from the college library, until at last it was com- 
monly reported that she had read every book in the library. 
She was wonderfully gifted in conversation, and it was the 
delight of the college professors to visit her humble dwelling 
and listen to her speech. It is said that on such occasions she 
would call in her boys, and while some would entertain the 
professors, others would help her, till presently tea would be 
ready, and the "feast of reason" begin again. 

The names of the children born to Richard and Irene B. 
Foster, in the order of their birth, are as follows : Eden Bur- 
roughs ; William (died in infancy) ; William Cowper (residing 
at the date of this writing, in infirm health, at Middletown, 
Ct.) ; Daniel (killed in the war for the Union) ; Sarah (residing 
at West Springfield, Mass.) ; Charles (fell in battle in the war 
for the Union) ; Jonathan Davis (died in infancy) ; Davis (pas- 
tor at Winchendon, Mass.) ; Roswell (residing at Independence, 
Iowa) ; Richard Baxter (preaching at Red Cliff, Col.) ; and 
Edward B. (died in early manhood). Of these adult sons, all 
but Edward received a college education; and of the seven 
thus educated, all but Charles entered the ministry. 

Eden was born under circumstances of peculiar trial. Eight 
days before his birth, his mother lost her beloved mother, 
and, four days afterwards, her father. It is a notable fact, 
that the first event in the life of the new-born babe was that 
the father, taking the little one upon his hands, joined with 
the mother in a solemn consecration of the child to the service 
of the Lord and the work of the ministry. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17 

Eden's boyhood was spent upon his father's farm. He 
was quick to learn, and from such parents received faithful 
instruction. When only four years old he read his Bible, 
and at a very early age he read aloud quite correctly, and 
was often appointed by his father to read at family prayers. 
He soon began to go to the district school near by, where for 
a part of the time he was taught by his uncle, Amos Foster, 
afterwards pastor at Canaan, N. H., Putney, Vt., Acworth, 1ST. H., 
and Ludlow, Vt. The social attractions of Hanover Centre, 
at that time, Avere unusual. During certain seasons, social 
gatherings of the young people were held weekly, which it 
was his delight to attend. To these early days the following 
fragments refer, — the first written while he was in college, 
the second near the end of his life. 

"I wish you could happen in, some of these pleasant even- 
ings, when the young people of the Centre have their cheerful 
meetings for work, and chat, and social enjoyment, and 
especially when a few choice friends circle around the fireside 
for still freer, more intimate, and more endearing intercourse. 
On such occasions my thoughts have sometimes wandered 
away to your northern clime, to wonder what you were about, 
and whether you felt contented and happy, and to wish that 
you might be whisked away by some sprite or other from your 
daily enjoyments, and introduced bodily among us. Then 
again have I marked the flaxen and ebon locks, the sunny 
brows, the bonny eyes, the blooming cheeks, the ruby lips, the 
dimpled chins, the sylph-like forms, the gentle tone, the 
kindly deeds, the sprightly movements, and once more have I 
been wrapped in reverie, — and thus have I soliloquized: 
Erelong how far and wide will these bright beings be dis- 
persed ! How checkered will be their fate! How will they 
employ the influence which such charms bestow ? Unquestion- 
ably, in some instances, wisely and well ; in others, it is to be 
feared, rashly and ill. Will these smooth, glossy ringlets 
be disheveled through business and care, and will these dark- 
tresses be whitened by the frosty fingers of age? How long- 
will these attractions remain? These brows will be clouded 
by sorrow, or perhaps by testy humors which now lie dormant ; 
these eyes darkened by sickness, and perchance by self-indul- 
gence and passion; these cheeks become wan and furrowed, 
and possibly destitute of their present temperate complexion ; 



18 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



these forms bowed and no longer symmetrical; these tones 
tremulous, or peradventure discordant; these deeds few and 
far between, and these movements tottering, or clumsy and 
slow. This beauty may be blighted by sudden disease, and 
snatched away by remorseless death. Will any one or more 
of this fair number be so wise, so self-denying, and so fortu- 
nate as to preserve the calm serenity, the innocent expression, 
the benevolent aspect, which her features now wear, the 
happy, good-natured echo of her tones, and the same obliging, 
friendly deeds, the same personal comeliness and activity? If 
there is such an one, her price is far above rubies." 

" I recall the young men by whom my aspirations and intel- 
lect were kindled, and how for two long winters we met weekly 
in a young men's club, at different dwelling-houses, to read 
essays, to recite declamations, to debate great questions, which 
have been the themes of controversy with clubs, and. colleges, 
and assemblies from time immemorial. It was a discipline 
to my mind and a stimulus to my rhetoric, as great as any 
which I found at Meriden, or Dartmouth, or Pembroke, or 
Concord, N. H. 

" I recall the young ladies who awakened in my bosom sen- 
timents of respect and admiration for all that was good, and 
beautiful, and gentle, and true ; and when the old red school- 
house was standing forty paces from my father's door, when 
the mountain winds were raging and the snow was piling itself 
in pathless drifts, it was not an unusual thing for those gentle 
daughters of the families of the district (the district was two 
miles wide east and west, and one mile wide north and south), 
blockaded by storms, to spend the night at my father's house. 
With most of those I have named, have I sat through the howl- 
ing blasts of the tempest. O, changing -fancies of a youthful 
mind ! I know not that these tender sentiments are what we 
call affection ; but I do know that I look back to those to 
whom I refer with kind regards and proud esteem, and prayers 
for their welfare*" 



The home life, though one of labor, was also one of enjoy- 
ment. The farm was located less than half a mile east of the 
Centre, on a hill-side, under the shadow of Moose Mountain. 
It was a fertile farm, but great level patches of rock here and 
there bade defiance to the farmer's art. A large house, the 
upper stories unfinished, stood on a knoll at some distance 



B10GRAPHIC4L SKETCH. 19 

from the road. A good-sized and well-filled barn stood near 
the house, while at quite a distance was the well, from which 
water was drawn by a pail and a hooked pole, the latter to be 
raised hand over hand by a dead lift. 

" Father and mother," wrote Mr. Foster afterwards, " gained 
their subsistence from a rocky farm, which was heavily mort- 
gaged. Weary manual toil was their portion. No foreign 
fingers ever meddled in their cookery, no foreign domestic 
ever entered their door. Looking back in the ancestral line 
to kindred, many of whom had been characterized by thought- 
ful and beautiful piety, and some of whom, by intellectual 
culture and ministerial usefulness, they made it their earnest 
aim not to fall below the standard of those who had gone be- 
fore. They had eight sons, full of energy and bounding life, 
not destitute of scholarly aspirations and hopes, and those sons, 
spite of the heavy hand of poverty pressing them down into 
silence and inaction, they resolved to train for an intellectual 
Christian life. I will not describe their struggles, sacrifices, 
and prayers, and the discouragements of their heart, as their 
great undertakings seemed likely sometimes to fail, while still 
Hope looked through the darkness to the sunshine beyond ; I 
will not depict the labors and self-denials of those boys, as 
with unfaltering determination they pursued knowledge under 
difficulties, carrying on their studies in the night, in the rainy 
days, in the cold winters, in the intervals of work, while in 
plowing, and planting, and hoeing, and mowing, in all the 
varied toils of the farmer, during seed-time, summer, and 
harvest, they accomplished as much as most young men of 
their age. 

"Who hewed the wood and drew the water? The well was 
fifteen rods from the house, and all the water that was used 
in the house was brought that distance. Morning, noon, and 
night did one or more of those young men take his two pails, 
one in either hand, and bring water for the mother ; and on 
Mondays, with wash-tub between them, and pails swinging on 
both sides as ballast, would two of them bring a tenfold por- 
tion. Who hewed the wood ? The father did not keep a yoke 
of oxen the year round, as he purchased his cattle in the spring 
and sold them in the fall. One serviceable horse, more strong 
than gay, was preserved as an heir-loom in the family, and 
sometimes, with whiffle-treu and chain, one son would go half 
a mile to the woods, and drag home a green tree, and the other 
sons would chop it, and then around the great old-fashioned 



20 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



fireside, in the long winter's evening, the whole circle would 
enjoy their books, their conversation, their home-bred sports, 
while the howling storm raged without. Thus they hewed 
their wood and drew their water, and steadfastly pressed 
onward and upward toAvards higher acquisitions. 

" I do not know that any one of those sons now regrets 
that in childhood and youth he was not aided by Irish domes- 
tics, nor waited upon by African slaves; I do not know that 
any one of them is ashamed of the painful steps by which he 
went up the pathway of knowledge, or of the humility of his 
early history." 

In consequence of Mr. Richard Foster's lameness, he was 
unable to support his family and educate his children solely 
from the products of his farm. It was then long before the 
East had come to rely on the West for meat, and being an 
excellent, judge of cattle, he was accustomed to buy and sell on 
commission for the Boston market. Gathering up his cattle 
from the surrounding towns, he would start out in his wagon 
with a son on foot, and drive his herd to Boston. This busi- 
ness did not assume any considerable ];>roportions till Eden 
had left the home. The growing boy was not kept too closely 
at work. He had his days of recreation in fishing in Goose 
Pond, east of Moose Mountain, and in hunting on the moun- 
tain itself. 

"The whole world of my childhood and youth," he subse- 
quently wrote, u seems to me like a dream, a beautiful and dear 
imagination of the past, but with colors fugitive as the rain- 
bow. I go to Hanover, I go out to the 'old Burroughs manse 
(or rather the site of it), I gaze off upon the 'Town Plot,' 
the forty acres, the home lot, the mountain pasture, the or- 
chard, the barn, the bucket that hung by the well, the pathway 
worn by the cart-wheels, half a mile through the centre of the 
lot, — all is changed, changed, changed ! Bowlders and trees 
and knolls, orchards and buildings and well-sweeps, cart-tracks 
and gate-posts and stone-walls, level grounds where we boys 
played ball, sheltered and shady nooks where we sat to read, side 
hills where we hoed the corn and mowed the grass, groves of 
trees where we found our firewood, — all are transformed. Ob- 
literation, negation, desolation, excommunication, are written 
on everything around the old roof-tree, I remember going out 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 

on 'Lord's Hill,' with Uncle Benjamin, to hunt partridges. 
I was a little timid boy. He was at home from Amherst Col- 
lege, and, eager hunter as he was, he shot two. He gave 
them to me to carry to my father's house, while he hunted for 
another. A stranger met me on the road ; he stopped to dicker 
with me ; with shining silver he tempted me ; in my diffidence 
and ignorance I sold him the partridges for ten cents, — and 
the invalid at home lost the broth. 

"I remember going out on a roving expedition, under the 
mountain, with a shot-gun. Rounding a point of woods in the 
Tenney pasture, I came direct upon a bear. He rose upon his 
hind feet, and for the space of three minutes we stood gazing 
at each other, as if, in some pre-existent state, we had been 
acquainted. Then the bear dropped and plunged into the 
woods, and, had it been at a later date, I should have medi- 
tated sadly upon the theories of Darwin and Spencer, and 
wondered why one of my own beautiful and affectionate rela- 
tives (going back to the jelly-fish ages) should leave me so 
unceremoniously to silence and loneliness." 

It should be added, to complete this narrative, that on the 
impulse of the moment, Eden aimed his shot-gun at the bear, 
and attempted to shoot, but, fortunately, there was tow in the 
pan, and the gun missed fire. The bear, however, turned and 
fled up the mountain, and the young man, coming to his senses, 
followed so good an example, and ran in the other direction. 
To these days of toil and pleasure do the following delightful 
letters of reminiscence refer. 

"I have very affectionate remembrances of the Moose Moun- 
tain spruces and haying seasons, of the Town Plot rocks and 
fences, and sheep and cattle, of the frequent and hot races 
after un-Rarey-fied horses in the forty acres, of the corn-plant- 
ings, July mowings, potato diggings of the home-lot, of fishing 
in Enfield Pond and Goose Pond, of the mud-dams and polli- 
wigs and minnows of Mink Brook, of the oat threshings, grain 
winnowings, wood choppings, and snow driftings of the cold 
winters. Charles talks somewhat glibly of his pleasant experi- 
ences of juvenile days in the matter of 'conquering a peace,' 
or of having a peace conquered by the application of ' Solo- 
mon's panacea.' I cannot say that my remembrances of that 
sort are so delightful as his. I cannot say that my judgment 
of the domestic rod is so favorable as that of some men. But 



22 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



time will bring the proof, and ' all's well that ends well ' ; at 
any rate it is better than if it ends poorly. I would not de- 
nounce the rod ; it has done its duty ; peace to its remains ! 

" I have many grateful and precious memories of ' auld lang 
syne ' in the old unfinished house, of the intellectual and social 
and religious privileges, of the love and toil and watch and 
prayer of father and mother, of the incitements to duty and 
helps to nobleness, and sources of enjoyment known there far 
more than in many an elegant palace of wealth, far more than 
in many a king's pavilion. Thanks once more to the father 
still living ; to her who rejoices in Heaven ; to a beneficent 
God. May all those ardent souls who once abode there, with 
energies unbounded and plans as large, with hopes and fears, 
with self-denials and toils, with loves and quarrels, with recon- 
ciliations and generosities and magnanimities genuine and true, 
with dreams and projects outrunning the power of any accom- 
plishment, with aspirations and prayers going up to Heaven, 
all meet at last where no partings come, where no disappoint- 
ments are known. . . . 

"I longed for the sight of Moose Mountain, of Lord's Hill, 
of Connecticut River, of the Green Mountains to the north- 
west, and Ascutney Mountain to the southwest. I longed for 
that bounding, gushing sense of life which I had as a boy, 
when, with ten oxen hitched to a sled, and five men and a 
dozen boys to drive the team, and shovel drifts, and holloa, and 
laugh, and push, and jump, and play, I used to go out in the 
morning after a storm, in the briglft sunshine and the keen air, 
and, after a mighty toil and exploit, come home, along in the 
afternoon, tired as a Venetian galley-man. 

Oh, for the clays, the bonny clays, of ' Auld Lang- Syne ' ! 

Oh, for the health, the bounding health, that once was mine ! " 

"My brother Eden," writes his brother Davis, "was gentle 
and considerate towards the younger members of the family, 
and we had the most perfect faith in him. In the little neigh- 
borhood debating societies, no one could throw such a flood of 
light on any subject as he. "To my boyish mind, there was no 
room for further talk, after he had made one of his impas- 
sioned, exhaustive speeches. He was the first in the family to 
go to college, and to enter the profession of the ministry. His 
course was a perpetual incitement to the younger brothers in 
the family. We felt that his example was one that we could 
follow. And we knew that his advice came from a heart only 
desirous of helping and stimulating us to do the best that was 
possible. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 28 



" His home, after he had one of his own, was always open to 
his younger brothers, and we were sure of a warm welcome, 
and of unfailing sympathy and kindness in our struggle for an 
education, or in our work in the later years of our professional 
life. How much I owe to his love and sympathy, and how 
constantly I looked to him for. counsel, I did not know till the 
wise, loyal, loving friend and brother passed into his reward." 

Here is an appropriate place to introduce a letter from one 
of his younger brothers, Rev. R. Baxter Foster, in which ref- 
erence is made to his early life. 

" My brother Eden was the oldest, and I the youngest but 
one, of the nine children who grew up in my father's house. 
He entered college when I was six years old, and had been at 
Meriden Academy before that. After he graduated, he taught 
and studied theology, and then made a home of his own. So 
it cannot be said that we ever lived in the same family. I re- 
member : (1) My brother's dignity, grace, and culture. I sup- 
pose it is nothing unusual for little boys to look up with great re- 
spect to older brothers who are in college ; yet I am persuaded 
they do not often have as much ground for their admiration as 
I had. And I base this opinion upon what I have seen of men 
since. Let it not be supposed that Eden was haughty, or cold, 
or distant to his younger brothers. On the contrary, he was 
frank and loving, and I remember words of encouragement 
that he spoke to me before I was ten years old. But that ten- 
der grace, that quiet dignity, that exquisite polish of manner 
that distinguished him through life, were his when a youth. 
They were not the acquired veneering of fashion ; they were the 
ingrain substance of his character. (2) His physical strength 
and activity. Our father was a true son of New Hampshire, 
broad-chested, five feet ten inches tall, he weighed two hun- 
dred and thirty pounds, and could do two days' work in one 
without minding it. Mother was a Burroughs, tall and slim 
and tough also, but with the toughness of finely tempered 
steel. Eden was nearer six feet tall, not heavily built, but as 
active and lithe as a panther. A single instance, imprinted on 
my memory, will illustrate his activity. My father had a fine 
high-spirited horse, which loved his freedom too well to be 
caught easily when loose. One. day, father, and I think all 
the eight boys, were after this horse in the pasture called the 
Town Plot (so called because the town gave it to grandfather 
Burroughs when he was settled as the minister; I believe it 



24 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



was the exact centre of the town of Hanover). We had cor- 
nered the horse with a line too close for him to break, when 
he jumped the fence and started at full speed down the road. 
Quick as thought, Eden, too, leaped the fence, striking the road 
a little behind the flying steed; but he actually ran past him, 
and stopped him. I hav,e seen Eden and Cowper, the next 
brother, handle a load of hay with marvellous swiftness. (3) I 
remember the eloquence with which he spoke, when a young 
man. It was not my privilege to hear him preach many times 
in after years, but both in his declamations and in his remarks, 
as in prayer-meeting, he gave full promise, when in college, of 
the eminence he afterwards attained as a public speaker. 

" When I met my brother in after years, it was always to 
receive a blessing from him. One instance I will relate. I 
heedlessly threw away many years of the best part of my life. 
At forty-five, with a large family, and without any property, 
I faced the question whether I ought then to take up the work 
to which my mother had consecrated me, which I had once ac- 
cepted, but had, twenty years before, renounced, — the work of 
preaching the gospel. Others, in whom I had confidence, said, 
'You ought to have been a minister, but it is now too late.' 
Eden, on the contrary, did not decide the question off-hand in 
that way, but with the tenderness of a father towards a son, 
gave me the tests which, in his opinion, constituted a call to 
preach, youth not being one of them ; and, in short, led me, 
though with great hesitation and trembling, to enter the min- 
istry. The Lord has blessed me beyond my expectation and 
beyond my deserts ; but if my brother Eden had discouraged 
me, I had never been a minister." 

We have referred to the fact that Eden studied for a while 
with his uncle, Amos Foster. Of this period in his life, the 
uncle writes as follows : — 

" This oldest son, from his early childhood, was religiously 
impressed by the teachings of his parents, and especially by 
the prayers of his mother. During the period of his child- 
hood and youth, he was not subject to any of those vicious 
habits, which too often darken the character of the young. 
His reading, his early associates, as well as his family in- 
struction, had a salutary influence in forming his moral 
character; and as he passed from the period of childhood to 
that of youth, not a blemish could be seen upon it. His apt- 
ness to learn was seen very early. When about the age of 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25 



nine years, he was a pupil of the writer in a winter district 
school. Not in a single instance was he known to disregard 
the rules of the school, and whenever called to recite his 
lessons, he did it without a mistake. A part of the fall of 
1828 and the following winter he spent in Canaan, N. H., 
engaged in the study of Latin under the instruction of his 
uncle, Rev. Amos Foster. It was the commencement of his 
preparation for college. He made excellent progress in his 
studies, and he especially excelled in English composition, to 
which he paid considerable attention. His uncle, the pastor, 
held a weekly Bible-class, in which, besides other appropriate 
exercises, essays were read upon the characters of individuals 
noted in the Bible, and other subjects of interest. The young 
student read a number of articles of his own composition, 
which displayed uncommon ability, and were deeply interest- 
ing to the hearers. He could now have been but a little more 
than fifteen years old. It was a wonder to all who heard him 
that one so young should understand so well topics of the Bible, 
and be able to express his thoughts in language so interesting 
and impressive." 



Ill — As Student and Teacher. 

1831—1840. 

In 1831, when eighteen years old, Mr. Foster entered Kim- 
ball Union Academy, at Meriden, N. H., to complete his prep- 
arations for college. While here, and in his first year, he 
was converted. As the place where he found the Lord, and 
where he began those life-long habits of absorption in study 
which were so delightful to him, this institution was always 
regarded by him with a warm affection. January 1, 1832, he 
united with the Congregational Church in Hanover Centre, 
twenty-five joining at the same time, among them the young 
lady who subsequently became his wife. In the fall of 1832 
he entered Dartmouth College. It was, however, with an im- 
perfect preparation. Probably from motives of economy he 
had remained at Meriden far too brief a time for the best 
results. He never ceased to regret this, as these words show. 

" I have suffered all my life because I did not enter college 
with a complete fitting in the languages. I have a good knowl- 

3 



26 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

edge of the belles-lettres , and a great love of literature. I have, 
to a considerable extent, an acquaintance with history and 
biography and the moral sciences. I have, I hope, some ca- 
pacity for so presenting truth as to interest and influence my 
fellow-men. But I shall never cease to mourn my classical 
deficiencies. I entered college, after the study of a year and 
a half, imperfectly fitted. I entered with an ardent, aspiring, 
hopeful mind. I studied intensely. After two terms, I was 
taken sick with typhoid fever, and lost entirely the thread of 
my freshman year. I dragged on through the sophomore year 
with the dead-weight of that lost term hanging to me, my 
courage gone, my scholarship sinking all the time. At the end 
of the sophomore year, I gave it up, convinced that I must 
lose a year, and spend a year of professed rest and idleness, 
partly in working on the farm, partly in teaching school, partly 
in brooding over my disappointments. I then entered the class 
one year behind my first, but I never recovered my sanguine 
hopes ; I never recovered my original classical standing." 

This estimate, however, taken by itself, would give an un- 
just impression as to Mr. Foster's early scholarship. His term 
of preparation was indeed brief and imperfect, yet it did not 
compare unfavorably in its results with similar work on the 
part of other students of that day. He laments his lack of 
classical culture, yet he stood so high in college as to be 
elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society ; and in after years he 
watched over the education of his children, and gave them 
such efficient aid at every stage of their progress as to prove 
that his early training was of no mean order. The sickness 
which is referred to in the extract just given, was a very 
serious matter. He returned to college after it with a feeble- 
ness and lack of energy which were noticed by his classmates. 
He did not seem like the same man. It is beyond doubt, that 
the sickness permanently impaired the strength of his consti- 
tution, and sowed the seeds of physical difficulties with which 
he was in constant conflict in after life. 

When he first entered college, he had been a champion in 
some of the athletic sports of the students, — especially in 
foot-ball his energy and powerful frame gave him unusual 
prominence. In this leadership, however, he was effectually 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27 

stopped by the barbarity of a fellow-student, who deliberately 
had his boots prepared with iron soles, and then on the foot- 
ball ground kicked Mr. Foster with all his might upon his 
shin. The leg was nearly broken by the blow, and Mr. Foster 
was scarcely able to get to his room. He suffered from the 
injury for weeks, and was never able to play foot-ball again. 

The following brief extracts from a letter by Rev. Samuel 
C. Bartlett, d. d., President of Dartmouth College, will be 
read in this connection with interest : — 

"Dr. Foster was a member of my class in college during 
the larger part of our freshman year. During the time when 
we were classmates, though I was but a boy of fifteen, some 
years his junior, I learned to look upon his character and bear- 
ing with great respect and admiration, and I am sure that I 
only shared the common sentiment of the class. I perfectly 
remember his excellent recitations, freshman year, and my rec- 
ollection is more distinct in regard to his recitations in the 
classics. While maintaining a general excellency of scholar- 
ship, so far as my memory serves me, he then exhibited also 
that uncommon command of language which characterized his 
later years, and which at that time was very marked. The 
neatness and often felicity of his renderings, as well as of his 
remarks in our class-meetings, have left a strong impression on 
my memory." 

While in college it was his practice to walk home every 
Saturday, and return to his studies on Monday. Of these 
walks he says : — 

"I walked, when in college, six miles every Saturday and 
six miles every Monday, through the whole course. I was 
eighteen before I left the homestead and the fatiguing work of 
the farm ; and most of my vacations, and six additional weeks 
of labor in every haying season, were spent in hard work till I 
was twenty-five years old. I think my muscles had a severe 
early discipline, and that my lungs in youth and early man- 
hood took in large draughts of mountain air. A part of the 
time in college I was a pretty smart foot-ball player. 

"The old hill, with the college standing in quiet graceful- 
ness at its foot, brought back to me a thousand recollections, 
some of them pleasant, some of them mournful. Would that 
I could bring back those hours of youth, and that course of 



28 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

study, in those loved halls of literature, even if I had to walk 
again twelve miles a week, and sometimes twenty-four, to 
secure the privilege. 

" I am making this tour as a sort of farewell survey. I do 
not expect many times hereafter to renew the joy. Memories 
of by-gone years, scenes of my childhood, ye fill me with min- 
gled delight and pain ! " 

His Sundays were sj)ent at home and in the quiet worship 
of the little church at the Centre. Here he taught in the 
Sabbath-school, having a class of young ladies, among them 
the one who subsequently became his wife. 

His years in college were spent in most straitened cir- 
cumstances, and much of the time he boarded himself, living 
mainly on crackers, bread, milk, and cheese. This practice 
brought on a derangement of the system, which followed 
him through life. His health became permanently impaired, 
dyspepsia and kindred evils being induced. 

" It is my firm belief," he said more than once, " that if I had 
never boarded myself an hour, I should have gained ten years 
of life which have now been lost through ill health and de- 
spondency." 

It is impossible to recover a satisfactory picture of those 
college days. A few facts only stand out like upright pillars 
amid the ruins of an ancient temple. In the winter of 1833- 
34, he taught school at Putney, Vt., boarding in the house of 
his greatly loved uncle, Rev. Amos Foster. Of this, and a 
previous visit, he afterwards wrote : — 

"I have recollections, not less grateful and profound, of 
your own family. The autumn and winter spent in Canaan, 
studying Latin, are vivid before me. My religious convictions 
were then deep and pungent and scriptural, founded on your 
own blessed instructions, and on the example of piety, intelli- 
gence, loveliness, and love which your household exhibited. 
Another winter spent in your family, when I taught school in 
Putney, made impressions on my mind and heart equally deep 
and permanent. Then I learned for the first time to acquire 
some self-possession in leading the thoughts and the prayers 
of school-house assemblies, and so to direct my conversation 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 

as to lead anxious inquirers to Christ. I was then better able 
to appreciate your high qualities as a minister, your strong 
arguments as a preacher, your great kindness and that of Aunt 
Harriet to me. Then your children (the four oldest) were 
my playmates and companions, and I cherished for them a 
love which lasts through years of time, and will last through 
the years of eternity." 

In 1834 he was evidently seriously meditating the choice of 
the ministry for his profession. A person whose name at one 
time was known throughout the land, heard of his intention, 
and sent him a letter of advice. This letter is a literary curi- 
osity, and for its keen insight into some ministerial evils, and 
its quaint language, shall have insertion here. 

Three Rivers, Jan. 10, 1834. 

" My Dear : Yours of the date of Dec. 4 reached me, and 

I now with pleasure render the attention to your very hand- 
some letter, which it well deserves. Were I to judge of your 
literary acquirements by your letter, I should form the most 
pleasing idea of your scholarship. 

"I admire the good sense of your parents in laying a foun- 
dation for the prosperity of their children in education and 
knowledge. I have abundantly experienced this benefit in 
my own family. Perhaps no man has ever been surrounded 
with greater evils and calamities, yet by the simple force of 
education I have been enabled to break the toils in which I 
was enclosed, 'to mount the tempest and direct the storm.' 
May you abundantly share the liberal benefits flowing from 
knowledge, but never encounter the bitter trials by which I 
obtained my knowledge. 

"I will tell you I disapprove altogether of your turning 
your attention to the ministry, and I will give my reasons for 
so doing. In the first place, such a pursuit contracts the 
mind into the narrowest circle. It unavoidably shuts out 
many branches of information that are indispensable for mak- 
ing you eminent for useful knowledge. Moreover, when men 
hear you preach against vice and in support of virtue, they 
will at once say, ' It is his trade ; by it he gets his bread,' and 
the filthy will be filthy still. Again, you must preach such 
doctrines as long custom has sanctioned in the place, let your 
own belief be what it may, or run the risk of losing your sup- 
port. To advocate a doctrine you do not believe, or suppress 
what you do believe to be the truth, must be extremely revolt- 



30 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



ing to an honest heart ; yet you may be placed in such a 
situation as to be exposed to suffer poverty and distress, not 
only yourself, but likewise a wife and children, in case you 
advocate what you believe to be the truth. As a minister, you 
will find yourself a degraded, dependent being, without the 
proud sensation of independence and possessing liberty to act 
in conformity to your own view of rectitude. You are in the 
heyday and glow of youthful feelings, — look only on the 
bright side of this question. Age and experience will show 
you a thousand distressing considerations attending the pur- 
suits of a clergyman, which you do not even dream of now. 
Should you reconcile your mind to go with the stream at all 
hazards, and make no opposition to errors of the most glaring 
nature, you might then expect to barely pass your life in indo- 
lence, and with a very moderate competency, and die unnoticed, 
leaving truth to take care of itself. Yet I do not believe you 
capable of submitting to such a selfish, inglorious career. 
However, much respect and attention are due from you to the 
advice of your excellent parents. I wish them to see this 
letter, and afterwards, when every argument bearing on this 
subject is taken into consideration, you will act accordingly, 
and you have my most cordial wishes for success, be your 
pursuits whatever they may. 

"You will remember to present my compliments of respect 
and affection to your parents, and believe me to be, sincerely 
and affectionately, " 

Happily this worldly-wise advice from one whose experi- 
ences had embittered him, was met by a large degree of con- 
secration and faith in the younger man, and so was not followed. 

It was during the college course, also, that Mr. Foster began 
to make public addresses. We have record of but one, of 
which he wrote in 1876 as follows : — 

" The first written discourse I ever delivered before a 
meeting-house audience was just forty years ago next Fourth 
of July, on temperance. I am willing the last sermon I ever 
preach should be on temperance." 

His friendships in college were strong, and he early devel- 
oped that warmth of affection which characterized him through 
life. For one of his classmates, Nathanael Wright Dewey, he 
had such love as David had for Jonathan ; and as it was with 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 31 

that memorable friendship of old, so here, death early broke 
the tie, and left the survivor permanently saddened. These 
are some of the words in which he refers to that friendship: — 

" I once had a friend, my other heart, trusted, congenial, 
worthy of all my love. God took away from me that friend. 
It was my greatest early bereavement. It cost me paroxysms 
of tears and indescribable heart-pangs. I thought then, I think 
now, that that one dear association with a congenial mind, with 
whom I could talk over great principles of science, great rules 
of duty, great hopes of the future, great memories of the past, 
was worth far more to me than a dozen intimate friendships 
would have been." 

In a letter concerning the death of another classmate, Rev. 
R. ~N. Wright, he thus expresses himself : — 

" I doubt not he is in heaven. I have shared in his counsels; 
I have partaken in his sympathies; I have joined my voice 
with his in the more public prayer and in the supplications of 
the solitary chamber; I have been instructed by his conversa- 
tion and life; I was honored to call him friend. My heart 
is bereaved. Recollections of the past return vividly, im- 
pressively, — thoughts of mingled mournfulness and delight. 
Dewey is before me, grasping my hand, looking into my face 
with his earnest eyes, pouring out the thoughts of his rich 
mind in his liquid, musical tones of voice. My heart bleeds 
afresh. Those conversations with Wright and Dewey in the 
private room, those rambles on the hill-side and in the retired 
grove, those topics, so often and eagerly discussed, of classical 
study and religious interest, all return to my mind. Their 
impression is unfading. Oh, these beloved and honored class- 
mates, 'who are now with the dead, or rather with the im- 
mortal living, whose faces now shine as the stars and as the 
brightness of the firmament,' come around me. Dewey, 
Wright, Lord, French, Griswold, Gibbs, Cooke, Brown, Chan- 
dler, Everett, have died in the Lord, and their works do 
follow them, their influence liveth forevermore." 

A letter to Wright Dewey, one of the earliest of Mr. Foster's 
now extant, gives us a glimpse of his college and home life. 
It shows his friendships, his high aims, his self-denying method 
pf living, his desire for his brothers' education (a desire he 



32 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

never lost), his activity in Christian work,- and his literary- 
tastes. The letter is as follows : — 

"Dartmouth College, Dec. 7, 1836. 

" My best friend, — Thanks to you for your letter, and thanks 
to the goose-quill that travelled through it and left those tracks. 
I read it twice within fifteen minutes after I opened it. May 
it be the precursor of a long and valuable series of true, warm- 
hearted, and clear-headed epistles betwixt you and me. Sepa- 
rations must take place, but if we love one another we shall 
spite old Terra and her progeny, holding frequent visitations, 
though mountains or seas may be between us. Nat gives good 
satisfaction in his school. E-. has a singing-school at M., and 
another at the Centre. K. is teaching. M. stayed a night 
with me a week ago. He had good luck in his school and was 
in excellent spirits. P. has thirty scholars. The price of board 
at Lebanon is only fifteen shillings sixpence per week. Father 
can't patronize such moderate-minded men, so the boys are 
studying with me. We have a stove in our room, a bed in the 
one adjoining, and plenty of hulled corn, frozen milk, bread, 
and pudding stowed away in pans, bins, boxes, barrels, and 
bread-baskets. So we live by steam, learn by horse-power, 
work by the job, and ' Go it, Jerry.' The health of people in 
Hanover remains in statu quo. As to my own welfare, I eat 
sparingly, exercise abundantly, sleep soundly and briefly, read 
occasionally, study diligently, perceive quickly, retain easily, 
visit at the Centre frequently, am received, gladly, and spend 
my time pleasantly. Do you expect any snow this winter? I 
am afraid I shall lose the pleasant sleigh-rides which lie so 
snugly ensconced in fancy's corner. 

"Rev. Mr. Birkby lately, while discoursing on the effect 
of Christian example in the conversion of souls, was 
affected even to tears. It was overpowering to see the well- 
spring of feeling opened in a breast which is ruled by such 
a mighty mind. I was too much moved to look around, but a 
man more than ordinarily callous seated at my side, was unable 
to resist the touching eloquence which spoke from the heart, 
for he too wept. Why does such preaching, enforced not only 
by its own intrinsic excellence, but by such weight of persuasive 
authority, tenderness, and purity of soul, such comprehensive- 
ness and acuteness of intellect, such grandeur of character, fail 
to melt the impenitent heart? In the Sabbath -school I have 
taken L.'s class and C.'s both under my care. The young la- 
dies appear serious and attentive. 1 am making some innova- 
tions in the mode of instruction, in order, if possible, to create 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 33 



a greater interest in the exercises. Oh, that my efforts might 
be guided by such a spirit of wisdom and devotion as to 
awaken these minds, which must exert such an influence in 
this world, and thrill with such keen emotions in the next, 
to a suitable understanding and realization of gospel truth ! 
In this, as in other situations, I need your prayers. 

"I have been reading some of Everett's orations. They 
may be styled politico-literary addresses. His main drift is to 
show the superiority of our political institutions, and the im- 
portance of intellectual cultivation. One oration contains the 
most masterly exposition of the source of our peculiar national 
greatness, I have ever seen. I think the excellence of Everett's 
writings consists in methodical argument, perspicuity of style, 
and fulness of historical illustration. He has the power of 
presenting a thought in all its aspects, without appearing prolix 
or tedious. His views are sometimes novel, always sensible, 
but rarely striking in point of originality and depth. He ap- 
pears to me a master in pathos, but inferior to many in cool 
argumentation. He rides buoyant on a full tide in description, 
but while philosophizing wades in a more shallow current. I 
discover not in his orations that graphic, forcible, figurative 
language for which some writers are distinguished. 

"Yours, E. B. F." 

Mr. Foster was graduated in 1837, with high standing, giv- 
ing an address (which may be found in a subsequent part of 
this volume) on " The Eloquence of Expiring Nations." 

In a letter to a sick daughter, written years afterwards, he 
sums up his struggles, and although it somewhat repeats state- 
ments already given, and unduly depreciates the attainments 
he made, it well deserves insertion here. 

" I began to fit for college at the age of seventeen, and en- 
tered college at the age of nineteen, two years older than the 
larger half of my class, having studied one year less, and being- 
much more imperfectly fitted than my school-mate from my 
earliest years, my room-mate in the academy. He was seven- 
teen when we entered college. In my sophomore year I was 
seized with typhoid fever, lay on my sick bed one whole term, 
was brought to death's door, went back to college before I was 
fully convalescent, attempted to go on with my class in a de- 
bilitated state, was unable energetically to study, lost rank and 
standing as a scholar, and finally was compelled to leave col- 



34 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

lege again, to spend a year in comparative inaction, to break 
the dear and cherished associations I had formed with my class- 
mates, and to fall back into the next class. No one can know, 
except by experience, the anguish of my disappointment. To 
this hour one of my most frequent and frightful dreams is the 
effort to get through college in vain, going into one class, then 
into another, then into a third, then into a fourth, a fifth, a 
sixth, and struggling on to old age without success, to get my 
graduation. I graduated at the age of twenty-four, and lie 
with whom I had been a school-boy from the first, at the age 
of twenty-one, outranked me in scholarship, on the books of 
the college faculty, by several degrees, although in the common 
school he was in the habit of coming to me ten times a day to 
help him work out his problems." 

It is impossible to produce a more vivid picture of Mr. Fos- 
ter's life while in college than is given in the following graphic 
letter from the able pen of Hon. James Barrett, of Rutland, 
Vt., until lately judge of the supreme court of the State of 
Vermont, a life-long and honored friend of Mr. Foster. 

"Early in college life, Foster, Dewey, and Barrett became 
intimate, and the intimacy grew more close, more sympathetic, 
more unreserved and entire, as college life went on. It was 
not abated by change in class relations.- We were each in the 
most straitened circumstances, and struggling with a common 
inward impulse to accomplish for ourselves a common end, 
against obstacles that seemed to most but ourselves not to be 
successfully encountered. They were tenderly and profoundly 
pious, — I was not. The effect of my being set back, by pov- 
erty, one year in my college course, with no obvious resource 
for carrying myself through, was to make me rebellious in feel- 
ing against the ways of Providence, misanthropic as to the 
world in general, and prone to skepticism. Byron, in much of 
his worst, was favorite and familiar for giving myself expres- 
sion. Foster and Dewey comprehended and appreciated me 
as I then was. They loved me as I loved them. They, with- 
out any demonstrative process or expressed purpose, set them- 
selves to the effort of casting out the demon and restoring me, 
' clothed and in my right mind.' Within my sophomore year, 
their junior, they did it. Neither misanthropy, skepticism, 
nor rebellion against Providence has been in mind or heart 
since. When I was back in college in the spring of 1835, my 
room was in. the same house with theirs, and just opposite on 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 35 



the hall. Our rooms were common between us, and we were 
together, without regard to time, within the twenty-four hours 
of the successive days. Our intimacy without doors, through 
the ways and fields and forests, by day and by night, was not 
less than within. After the college year of 1835, they took an 
attic room in the old President Wheelock house, that stood 
where Read Hall now stands, — 'the garret,' as they called it, 
— and there they abode through the rest of their college life. 
Though my room was not very near theirs, still our rooms were 
in common occupancy about as much as before. Their room 
was famous as ' the garret,' by reason of the character and con- 
dition of its occupants. Much of the time they boarded them- 
selves. 

" They were very unlike as men and as students. They were 
equal in substance and scope of mind, equal in a consecrated 
ambition, equal in godly walk and conversation. Dewey was 
sparkling, playful, and poetic, — harmonizing with & Allegro ; 
Foster was grave, reserved, ratiocinating, — sympathizing with 
11 Penseroso / and yet, on occasion, and with his intimates, 
he was funny. He and Dewey bantered and sported with each 
other like children. Both were equal to the utmost exactions 
of thorough and mastering studentship, yet neither made 
himself 'a college dig.' They regarded a college course as 
involving and accomplishing much more than rank achieved 
by marks in the recitation-room, — they regarded it as a stage 
in the process of personal education, and with excellent 
discernment they pursued it in such ways as to gain for them- 
selves the utmost measure of development, acquired knowledge, 
discipline, and cultivation. They ranked well in recitation- 
room marks; they were the highest as thinkers, writers, and 
debaters. For literary culture and scholarly finish, they 
ranked foremost. Dewey answered to the Poeta Nascitur of 
Horace, and exhibited genius of rare capability, at the same 
time being able and elegant in prose composition. Foster did 
not affect the 'linked sweetness' of poetic numbers. He was 
as much born to strong, facile, and eloquent prose, as Dewey 
was to a fine poetic faculty. Foster, in the quality of prose 
composition, and in his elocution, was regarded the most 
finished writer and the most eloquent speaker in his class. 
Through his junior and senior years he had no superior in the 
college. 

u In all written performances the best was expected of both, 
and that expectation was always answered. It was peculiarly 
matter of general interest to hear everything produced by 
Foster, His elocution enhanced the interest. After J 834, for 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



several years, parts for the stage, on commencement day, 
were assigned to all the members of the graduating classes. 
That day of 1837 was very warm. Foster's part came about 
the middle of the afternoon session. The house was densely 
crowded with a sweltering, tired, uneasy, and noisy audience. 
Little or no attention had been accorded to several preceding 
speakers, their voices even being mainly inaudible on account 
of the noise, almost hubbub, throughout the house. Foster 
was announced. He advanced from the side entrance towards 
the centre of the stage, tall and finely proportioned in figure, 
dignified and graceful in bearing, solemn and impressive in 
countenance, wearing the silk robe of those days. As he 
appeared, and was advancing, a hush in the confusion was 
obvious, which increased as he approached and bowed to the 
president, and still more increased as he turned and bowed to 
the audience. All eyes were becoming intent on the person 
with such a port and expression. His theme was ' The Elo- 
quence of Expiring Nations ' ; his first sentence was, l Death 
itself is eloquent.' When he had uttered it, with his deep, 
rich, and commanding voice, with a countenance and bearing 
that helped to the subduing effect, every sound but the voice 
of the speaker was hushed to the silence, as it were, of death 
itself, and that silence continued till he had disappeared from 
the stage, and still continued till the next speaker was called. 
"In all my now long life, in almost annual attendance on 
commencements of colleges, in more than forty years in courts 
as lawyer and judge, in the mean time an attendant on ser- 
mons, lectures, platform and stump speeches, uttered by all 
grades, from the highest downward, I have never witnessed 
such an overmastering effect produced by a speaker upon his 
audience. There was but one expression in respect to it. Mr. 
Ohoate said it was the most eloquent performance of the kind 
that he ever heard. He was accustomed to recur to it, and 
repeat the expression during his life. I think every person 
who heard that piece carried ever after a distinct and vivid 
impression of the man and his performance." 

After graduation in the fall of 1837, he took a position as 
assistant teacher in Pembroke Academy, remaining there till 
March, 1838. He then accepted the position of principal in 
an academy at Concord, N. H., and taught there one term. It 
was during these months that he learned to sing. In after 
years he was an excellent singer. He had a fine tenor voice, 
and could read music well. As a family grew up around him, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 37 

nothing pleased him more than, with wife and son and 
daughter, to organize a quartette in his own house, and with- 
out instrumental aid to sing psalm tunes by the hour at sight. 
The way in which he learned the art of singing illustrates the 
indefatigable energy with which he carried to a successful 
issue whatever he undertook. In a letter to his son, he tells 
how this was : — 

"I learned to sing after I was twenty-four years of age, and 
had graduated from college, by the sheer force of will and 
drill, with only a tuning-fork and a singing-book. I had no 
other instrument, and no teacher at all." 

In the fall of 1838 he went to Andover Theological Sem- 
inary, entering the class of 1841. He remained here till the 
middle of January, 1840, or about a year and a half. Extracts 
from letters to his sister during this time show something of 
his thoughts and occupations. 

"If we study as we ought, with reflection, discrimination, 
self-examination, and self-application, studying, reading, med- 
itating, not for amusement or pleasure merely, but for practical 
information, information which we may use in governing our- 
selves and influencing others, we shall be growing constantly 
into the stature of intellectual maturity, our spirits will be 
enriched, our minds replenished, our judgment corrected, our 
affections chastened, our desires elevated, our hopes enlarged, 
our courage renewed, our enjoyment augmented, all our 
energies rendered more efficient. Oh, the rewards of self- 
denying, persevering application and patient thought ! Who 
would not forego the gratification of sense, for refinement of 
soul? Who would not sacrifice momentary ease, for perma- 
nent delight? And when the heart is cultivated with the 
mind, so that holiness is acquired as well as knowledge, who 
would not undergo any privation or sustain any effort, for the 
peace of conscience and heavenly calm that ensue?" 

Hanover Centre, April 23, 1839. 
" I am writing to-night, in one of our very plain, but still to 
me very agreeable rooms. Home is home, be it ever so 
homely. I do not see why I have not as good a right to love 
an old-fashioned chair, or unadorned walls, if they belong to 
my father, and are therefore, as it were, mine, as the Scotch- 
man has to love his rugged hills, or the Switzer his frozen 



38 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



cliffs. Deliver me from the policy or feeling which estimates 
everything just according to the price it will bring at an 
auction or at private sale. 

"I have been very busy with compositions, recitations, 
lectures, letters, etc. Went to Derry on the Fourth to deliver 
my temperance address ; was highly favored in all respects, — 
audience, delivery, etc. I am well at present, though I con- 
sider my health as far from being a certain possession. There 
are days when I have great enjoyment in devotional exercises, 
again I am in deep water. 

" What books do you read ? I have mostly confined myself 
of late to religious biography and devotional writing. Pray 
for me, pray for me, and work while it is day." 

While here he became engaged to Miss Catherine Pinneo, 
of Hanover. At this time he wrote a journal, of which the 
following is an extract : — 

"Andover, Mass., June 1, 1839. 

" One more spring is gone. Shall I ever enjoy another ? 
Perhaps not. My dear Dewey entered upon his last summer 
a year ago to-day, with prospects of life and health probably 
more fair than mine are at this moment. .Yet he passed to the 
shadow-land, even before the opening of the following spring. 
Fit me, O God ! for death. I desire to set my soul in order, 
and my life. And what does this imply? Towards myself, 
distrust, denial, control; towards others, meekness, charity, 
good-will, and good deeds; towards God, confidence, obedi- 
ence, adoring love; towards sin, abhorrence; and for holiness, 
the strongest aspirations. How shall I spend this summer 
aright ? I will devote half an hour each morning and evening 
to devotional exercises. If I walk softly with God, may I not 
hope that He will enable me to walk wisely with men and hap- 
pily with myself ? ' Practice of present duty is the best teacher 
of duty to come.' 

"I am just closing the first week of the twenty-seventh year 
of my life. It seems impossible that I am so old. I look 
back, and certain points of time in my life occur distinctly to 
mind. At ten, I remember reflecting upon my age, thinking 
J had lived a great while, and that I never should be a man, 
the time seemed to move so slowly. At sixteen, I began to 
study. I felt even then that by-gone years had been long, and 
that I was still far from man's estate. I entered college at nine- 
teen, with no very definite, yet sanguine hopes. Soon after, 
the impression first began to creep upon me (and often has it 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 39 



made me mentally crawl) that I was growing old, and that 
my term of life might speedily be closed. Now I look, or at- 
tempt to look, upon the last seven years (for I cannot with the 
utmost minuteness of recollection realize so long a lapse), and 
they seem like ' a dream when one awaketh.' Surely life is a 
bubble, a vapor, a breath. Shall 1 continue to be whirled with 
such velocity towards eternity? Well does it become me, 
then, to ' do with my might ' now. God grant me the will and 
the power. 

"The last has been to me a memorable month, — a month to 
stand by itself, where memory may return and linger and 
delightedly repose. The fifteenth day, when joyfully, yet 
thoughtfully, I went and came; the eighteenth, the day 
when anxiously I went, and tranquilly, gratefully left; the 
twenty-second, the day when I parted with confidence unlim- 
ited, with love and joy, I fondly believe, which will increase 
till death. How eventful to me has been the past year ! I 
commenced it with health impaired, a responsible situation as 
teacher lost. As I progressed, my health improved, the way 
was opened to me to commence a course of sacred study. A 
long-cherished desire was thus gratified ; the most favorable 
opportunities for spiritual improvement were afforded. Still, 
I had not peace of mind, nor joy in religion. I paused, I re- 
flected; became convined my piety was of the head, not heart. 
I gave up my hope ; I am seeking the favor of God ; trem- 
blingly I wait the issue. I have cause for encouragement and 
for doubt. O, my deceitful heart ! Nought can contrast witli 
thee, but the riches of infinite grace. In the winter I lost a 
friend, Wright Dewey, dear to me above other friends, kind, 
intelligent, judicious, good, above most who live. Great is my 
loss. Yet have I gained another, possessed I believe of many 
of those qualities which distinguished my departed friend. 
May I be worthy of her, and true to her ! And may God smile 
upon our present attachment, and grant our future union ; and 
may we be to each other henceforth the highest earthly assist- 
ance and delight." 

In January, 1840, his health again gave way, and he went 
back to his home at Hanover sick, never to resume his theo- 
logical studies. In the same month he received an invitation 
to return to Pembroke Academy as assistant instructor. He 
took the position and began his duties there in May, 1840. 
While there he wrote thus to his sister : — 



40 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

"Do you take any walks these bright mornings, when flow- 
ers and blossoms are swelling, the birds carolling, the breezes 
invigorating, and the whole face of nature bursting into 
beauty ? I was out this morning by half-past five (not very 
early, by the way), and it was delicious. Did you see the 
rainbow last night ? Was it not superb, as well as charming, 
— a feast for the eyes, and a glory for the soul ? Whenever I 
begin to teach, and have distinctly brought before me the num- 
ber of important subjects which I ought to understand ; when 
I see the extent, even, of elementary truths, in their various 
connections and modes of application, — I seem to shrink into 
nothing, and a hundred lives seem all too short to give one a 
thorough training and instruction of mind. O, for grace to 
improve my time, and means for advancement ! " 

Aug. 11, 1840, he married Catherine, daughter of Dea, 
Orramel and Eunice (Hough) Pinneo, of Hanover, N. H. Mr. 
Foster's engagement at Pembroke closed the last of Novem- 
ber, 1840. His aspirations and desires were all for the min- 
istry, and he determined to teach no longer, but to seek a posi- 
tion as a pastor at an early day. 



IV. — Pastorate at Henniker, N. H. 

1841—1847. 

In June, 1841, Mr. Foster began to labor in the gospel min- 
istry in Henniker, N. H. He was there on trial with reference 
to becoming pastor in the place, and was expected to preach 
several Sundays, and do pastoral work throughout the town 
before the people should decide whether or not they desired 
his services. While in this critical and anxious position he 
wrote thus to a brother : — 

"Henniker, N. H., June 13, 1841. 

" My health is as good as when I left Hanover. My time is 
very busily occupied, and still I accomplish but little. I have 
visited nearly fifty families, and the people seem friendly and 
agreeable. I board with a very kind and intelligent family. 
They are young people, have no children, possess abundant 
means, and are heartily engaged in every good word and work. 
It is a pleasant town, rather hilly and rocky, but the land is 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 41 

productive, and supports in good circumstances an industrious 
population. The terra of my stay here is altogether uncertain. 
I know not how soon the people will conclude either to give 
or refuse a call." 

Shortly after, however, he received a unanimous invitation 
to become pastor, and was ordained and installed over the 
Congregational church in that place, Aug. 18 of the same year. 

Henniker is a quiet agricultural town on the Contoocook 
River. The little village, where the church and academy stand 
side by side, nestles at the foot of hills so lofty that in some 
parts of the country they would be called mountains. The 
soil, like most of New Hampshire land, is thin and rocky, ex- 
cept on the river-bottoms, yet the people manage to secure a 
comfortable living from it, even when making their homes, 
as some of them do, on the topmost elevations of seemingly 
inaccessible hills. 

The people in those days — and doubtless their peculiarity 
has not changed — were a reading, thinking, most intelligent 
community. In their isolation, and ignorance of the daily 
paper, solid books and earnest thought were their delight, and 
the pulpit an intellectual stimulus for which they hungered 
through the week. The academy flourished in full strength 
throughout New England in those days, being not yet super- 
seded by the more showy but far less helpful high school of 
more recent days; and the academy in Henniker was no excep- 
tion to the rule, that the academy system developed individ- 
uality and power of thought as no other system of education 
can. In consequence largely of such influences, the young 
people of Henniker, growing up around their young pastor, 
were becoming independent thinkers, and many of them went 
forth in after years to take prominent positions in the world's 
life. 

Mr. and Mrs. Foster found a happy home with congenial 
friends in the house of Deacon and Mrs. Horace Childs. Here 
their first years in Henniker were spent; here were born their 
two eldest children, — Addison Pinneo (named for a maternal 
uncle who died in early youth), and Emily Edgerton (named 
4 



42 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

for another relative of eminent piety). But no happier por- 
trait of Mr. Foster during this first pastorate could be drawn 
than is here given by the pen of a life-long friend, Mrs. Horace 
Childs. 

" Mr. Foster entered on his work with much trembling and 
self-distrust, relying on divine aid, which never failed him. 
This was in times when a minister was expected to preach 
two sermons every Sabbath, and conduct a third service in the 
evening. For a young man who had preached only three times 
before coming among us, this was the beginning of an arduous 
work. Add to this his strong desire to make every production 
of his pen complete, and replete with instruction, glowing 
with love for souls, and fidelity to God, and we have the 
elements of the well-nigh perfect minister and preacher he 
afterwards became. 

" He wrote and spoke rapidly, for he had much to say. Of 
course the mere manual labor of this work was wearing, and 
the small hours of the Sabbath morning not unfrequently 
found his pen doing the bidding of his will in preparation for 
the pulpit. His friends and brother ministers urged him to 
extemporize, that he might relieve somewhat this labor of 
the hand, and as best in many ways. This he was reluctant 
to undertake, but did so effectually. In training himself for 
this kind of speaking, also for physical exercise, he used often 
to range over the hills and through the forests till he came to 
a certain rock, still known among the people in the vicinity 
(who often saw him in the distance, and sometimes heard the 
tones of his voice) as Pulpit Rock. Here he would plant him- 
self, and rehearse to imaginary hearers the thoughts teeming 
from his fertile braiu. Then starting homeward with a swing- 
ing gait, he would scarcely break his run of more than a mile 
till he reached home. He would then bury himself in his 
study for the deeper work of preparing the beaten oil for the 
sanctuary. In his close application to study, we could see that 
this method, though better than no change, really gave the 
mental strain almost no relaxation. 

" As might be expected from such devotion to his study, his 
sermons became richer and richer in thought and in power. 
Several of them were so highly esteemed by the people as to 
be requested for publication. This was true of a series on 
baptism. His ministry was fruitful in good things to the 
church and to individual souls, as many now living can and do 
testify, as many others who have passed over the river may 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 43 



now be testifying with joyful thanksgivings, as he, with them, 
bows before the great white throne. There was deep religious 
interest at one time, and thirty or more were added, to the 
communion during his stay. 

" It was not always easy for him to satisfy the wishes of the 
people in regard to parish visiting, and satisfy his conscience 
in regard to his sermons. Very likely some were unreasonable 
in their desires. -But those who, when sick or afflicted, were 
favored with his ministrations, felt that his words were well 
chosen and full of instruction and consolation, his manner also 
sympathetic and affectionate. 

" Humility was a marked feature of his character from the 
first. I remember hearing him speak of his diffidence in going 
before a certain tutor (afterwards professor) in college, when 
his knees smote together as if in a stage-fright ! This was, 
perhaps, not strange ; but that, towards myself and others, who 
looked up to him as a superior being, he should have always 
been so deferential in manner, made me at least feel exceed- 
ingly small. He had a very humble opinion of his pulpit 
efforts. On one occasion a lady remarked to him that his 
sermon on the previous Sabbath greatly interested and helped 
her. He seemed much surprised, said he was glad if any one 
was benefited, that he was so ashamed of it he wished there 
had been a back-door through which he could have made his 
exit without meeting any one face to face, and that he often 
wondered the people had patience to hear him. 

"He had his full share of trials and perplexities, some of 
them from among the people here, others from outside influ- 
ences. It was during his ministry that some of the wildest 
throes of the abolition movement were felt, when the effort 
of some leaders seemed to be as much to abolish the church 
and government as slavery itself. This church, from its con- 
nection with some of them, was profoundly stirred. Of course 
the pastor needed a level head and a steady hand to lead it 
through the excitement. He proved himself equal to the task, 
by divine help ; and while his fidelity to the church was un- 
flinching, his own heart was deeply moved by the condition of 
the bondsman and the national issues. To his keen apprehen- 
sion, perplexities were thickening. In those days of frequent 
change in the ministry, it was not unexpected, although very 
trying to us, when he made up his mind that he must leave us 
and seek a change that would give him a little respite from the 
mental and physical strain which was upon him. He was not 
ambitious for notoriety. Although he received some tempting 
invitations to preach, he was first dismissed, and then accepted 



44 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



a call to Pelham, a place scarcely more eligible than this, except, 
perhaps, as it was nearer great centres of influence, into one 
of which he was eventually drawn. He subsequently visited 
this place several times, always receiving a warm welcome from 
the people. In the summer of 1850, I think, during a vacation 
of a few weeks, he addressed a large and enthusiastic audience 
in the open air, on the issues then before the country, and in 
behalf of freedom for the slaves, in which some of his utter- 
ances, as we look back upon them, were as prophecies. Great 
interest was awakened, and as an expression of the apprecia- 
tion felt for his noble, eloquent sentiments, a silver pitcher, 
with a suitable inscription, was presented him. Again he came 
from Lowell and gave a lecture in a course before our academy 
students and their friends. His last memorable and most pre- 
cious visit was made on his return from a vacation spent in 
Greenboro', Vt. He then preached his last sermon here, to a 
crowded and deeply interested audience, closing a faithful and 
solemn address with the words of Mrs. Stowe's poem, 'Knock- 
ing, knocking, ever knocking,' the excitement and effort of 
which prostrated him for the time. His conversation at our 
house, with friends gathered here, was a rare treat, whatever 
the theme discussed, though tinged, when personal experi- 
ences were introduced, with a tone of sadness and self-distrust, 
shading somewhat the comforts of joy in his past work, and 
assured hope in the future. This, as it struck me, yet indicated 
a rich experience and a ripe Christian character. 

" There were other traits of his life apparent here, which I 
have not mentioned. With a habitual gravity of demeanor, 
he yet had a keen relish for repartee, and enjoyed social inter- 
course with those who could throw a lance with him. But he 
had too high an estimate of the sacredness of his office to de- 
scend to anything like jesting, or that flippancy which often 
brings the ministerial office into disrepute with men of the 
world." 

Few touches are needed to complete this beautiful pen- 
drawing. The successive years of this quiet pastorate rolled 
by with little change. The young minister, battling with 
poverty, inexperience, a constitutional self-distrust, and chronic 
ill health, was still gaining strength day by day, and becoming 
fitted for larger accomplishment in the future. Not only in 
the long walks to which reference has already been made, but 
in the care of a garden connected with his home, he found 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 45 

exercise and aid to health in the latter part of his residence 
in Henniker. The garden was always faithfully cultivated. 

He found relief from the pressure of pulpit preparation by 
an occasional exchange, sometimes going back to Pembroke, 
where he had taught. A minister then settled in Pembroke 
bears testimony, that when Mr. Foster was to preach in the 
place, " All the young men of the academy would get the news 
beforehand, and arrange themselves for a treat." Thus early 
did he manifest that peculiar power of interesting young men, 
which continued with him to the last, which gave him his 
largest influence in his subsequent labors in the city, and led 
him to address so many of the institutions of learning in 
New England. 

Here, too, was manifested that largeness of heart, warmth 
of affection, and that fervent piety, which throughout life were 
quite as much elements of his power as any intellectual pre- 
eminence which may be accorded him. He was devoted to 
his family, not only embracing in his love and care his wife 
and children, but as eldest in a large circle, doing all he 
possibly could for his father and mother, for his brothers and 
sister. Through his influence, several of his family found 
opportunities to teach in Henniker, and all were ever welcome 
at his home. 

He met the duties of the ministry in no perfunctory 
way, but with a burning love for souls. It was his meat to do 
his Father's will. Every letter of his written at this time 
breathes a spirit of loving faith in God, and of earnest 
desire to do good. 

In illustration of these points, extracts from his letters are 
here introduced. Here are paragraphs from a letter written to 
a brother in the Theological Seminary in New York City : — 

"Dear Brother, — We are engaged in a mighty work. It 
needs a head all intelligence and a heart all love. It is arduous, 
weighty, overwhelming. Yet, if we are truly devoted, it is 
the work nearest heaven of any below. Its privileges are 
commensurate with its responsibilities. The holy minister, 
whose soul is wholly engrossed, whose energies are all 



46 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



consecrated, is a privileged man. He breathes in a lofty 
atmosphere ; he has high communings and a heavenly support ; 
he has indeed heavy trials; he needs them. His discipline 
should correspond with his duties ; but he has divine consola- 
tion ; he has a refuge and a help abundantly sufficient ; his 
strength will be as his day. Trust, then, the Lord, my brother, 
stay yourself on His promises, lean on His arm, renew your pur- 
pose and your vows, set your banners with a fresh confidence 
and zeal, and in the name of God shall you conquer." 

Another to his wife is as follows : — 

"I have been reading and meditating to-day, my dearest 
companion, with much emotion and with some tears, upon 
household religion. How shall the family be made a school of 
piety? How shall means be applied and influences brought to 
bear so as to promote growth in grace and meetness for 
heaven ? I believe heaven has a type on earth, and a prepara- 
tory school on earth : it is the holy, happy family. Amid the 
endearments and blessedness of the domestic circle, amid the 
ties and obligations and ennobling influences of the conjugal, 
parental, and filial relations, amid - the solemn scenes and 
thrilling events which every family must meet, there are 
agencies which the Spirit of God can render mighty for our 
sanctification. I feel my deficiencies, I feel my remissness ; 
I feel deeply anxious for ourselves and for our children. I 
believe we need more deliberation on this point, more assidu- 
ous attention to times and circumstances and events, more 
open and frequent reference to all domestic affairs and ordinary 
topics of conversation, to religious obligation, more anxious 
inquiry after right modes of instruction, a more systematic use 
of its means. Shall our dear children be trained for God? 
Shall we beguile them from paths of sin, and gently win 
them to heaven? Shall we bring down upon them, by our 
prayers and our holy instructions and our heavenly example, 
the distilling, sanctifying dews of God's grace? Shall we help 
one another efficiently, continually in our journey heavenward? 
The Lord in boundless mercy, and by His presence working 
with us, help us to do so. The Lord sanctify for Himself our 
precious babies; the Lord sanctify us more and more, and 
make our household in all its branches pastures of loveliness 
and piety evermore. I cannot say all I wish on this subject. 
I must talk with you when I see you, to excite to more earnest 
effort, and to secure an influence if possible, all-pervading, 
and, with the blessing of heaven, effective to make our home 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



the abode of religion, with all its beauty and all its delights. 
Our children may die in childhood, we are liable to be taken 
away at any moment ourselves, and I shudder with indescrib- 
able dread at the thought of a final parting without the hope, 
for each and all, of endless peace." 

The following letter shows his concern for the spiritual wel- 
fare of two brothers who had lately left the parental roof to 
seek a home in the western part of Kentucky : — 

" I have been offering to the God of all grace, my petitions 
for the friends who are out of sight, but never, for any long 
time, out of mind. My prayers were feeble and inadequate, 
but they flowed forth from a yearning heart, and from the 
movings of strong desire. I feel solicitude for B. Has 
he spent the day communing with God and his own soul? 
Has he been attentive to duty and to eternal realities ? Will 
he maintain his integrity against temptation from without 
and inclinations from within, against the delusions of his own 
heart and the specious appearance and plausible sophistries of 
a deceitful world? May a merciful God lead him away from 
evil, and guide him and guard and bless ! 

"Dear brother, I did not forget you in my musings or my 
prayers. You know not how fervently I desire that you may 
taste the joys of pardoned sin and have intimate communion 
with the Redeemer of your soul. It is a hope which I devoutly 
cherish, that you will yet be a devoted minister of the gospel, 
a watchman for souls, and an accepted instrument of important 
good. If you would consecrate your energies and attainments 
to holiness to God, how much might you accomplish for Christ, 
and to swell the blissful anthems of heavenly praise ! I know 
that when your attention is requested, you are willing to listen 
to the truth with a candid mind ; but do you search for it as 
for hidden treasures ? I have never perceived in you a haughty 
tone nor a determined indifference. But, after all, are you 
duly aware of the importance of the truth which you allow to 
pass by with only casual and careless attention ? How inade- 
quate is the knowledge, even of the wisest, and how faint are 
our convictions upon any subject, if we take no pains to keep 
them lively and distinct, and to strengthen and enlarge them ! 
We must study and meditate, and use all means of informa- 
tion, or we cannot rightly discern and judge respecting any 
temporal matter ; how much less concerning the character and 
destiny of the soul ? " 



48 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

An incident which broke in upon the quiet of his ordinary 
life, was an invitation which he accepted to preach for Rev. 
Dr. Bouton, of Concord, N. H., in some revival services which 
he was holding. It is interesting to know that Rev. Dr. 
Blanchard of Lowell, and Towne of Boston, with both of 
whom he was years afterward associated in the same city, 
were to be invited to join in these services. 

It was seldom that Mr. Foster found opportunity to leave 
the seclusion of his home among the hills. Yet when he did 
he made the most of his privileges, and drew lessons from 
everything he saw and heard. At one time he spent some 
weeks at Saratoga to recruit his health. In this visit he wrote 
as follows to his wife : — 

"We are at Saratoga Springs, by the favor of a kind 
Providence, safely guarded through journeying perils, and 
comfortably provided for our sojourn here. Owing to the 
excessive heat we came by slow stages. We arrived about 
five this afternoon. Our progress was as follows : thirty miles 
Tuesday, to Bridgewater ; forty miles Wednesday, to Poultney ; 
thirty-two miles Thursday, to Fortville ; fourteen miles Friday, 
to the Springs. 

"I have taken a new boarding-place. I now get my Con- 
gress water, more powerful than the others, my Pavilion water, 
the most agreeable tonic, and my hot baths, by going only a 
few steps. I have a cool and pleasant room for a dollar 
a week, and for less than a dollar I have supplied myself with 
a bit of cheese, and graham bread, and soda biscuit, enough to 
last me while I stay. A minister and his wife and baby have 
a parlor and bedroom on the same floor, and are living by 
themselves in all retirement and domestic bliss. The father 
and mother sing in the evening, treble and bass sweetly 
blending, and in the morning the little one tunes its 
pipes, and in alto key gives a delightful solo, rejoicing all 
hearts. . . . Ole Bull has been here with his Norwegian 
magic, and the air is so magnetized with the power of his 
enchantment, probably, that every fiddle-bow awakes unprece- 
dented strains, and thus I conclude Uncle J. was actually 
bewitched. One can behold here a specimen, on no very 
limited scale, either of fashion, splendor, aristocracy, pomp, 
or outside show of our American continent. Yet, how poor is 
it all! Wealth can purchase many comforts and many luxuries 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 49 

which are exceedingly agreeable to pampered, selfish desire ; 
fashion affords many gratifications to vanity and pride, many 
seeming social delights ; yet the pleasures of a pure and holy 
heart, of a cultivated, enlightened mind, of a quiet home, where 
souls are knit in closest sympathy, constant communion, un- 
changing love, how far, how immesurably superior ! 

"Dear C, I believe it would not take a long separation 
from my own loved circle, nor a long observation of the gay 
and heartless world, to make me feel more deeply even than I 
have hitherto felt, that God has greatly blessed me in my wife 
and children ; that if darkness gathers in other quarters, here 
all is light and love ; and that, if my heart is weighed down 
with almost an insupportable burden, yet I have abundant 
compensation and cause for joy in the nearer, sweeter, richer 
affections of my own family." 

In 1846 he was sent as delegate, in company with Rev. Pliny 
B. Day, from the General Association of New Hampshire, to 
the Old School General Assembly, meeting in Philadelphia. In 
performing this duty he passed through New York, where he 
heard Rev. Dr. Cox, whose speech he thus describes : " Sar- 
casm, humor, oddity, bold, novel, striking thoughts, argument, 
history, mirth, pathos, happy hits, great truths, a strange med- 
ley and jumble, brought out with singular independence, and 
appropriate only for Dr. Cox." From New York he went 
directly to Washington, and then returned to the meetings of 
the Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, both the Old School 
and New School General Assemblies being in session there. 
At this time the slavery question was beginning to be hotly 
agitated, and Mr. Foster took the keenest interest in the dis- 
cussion. The following extracts of letters written home from 
Philadelphia, will show his feelings : — 

" In going from Philadelphia to Washington I rode all night 
in the cars. About break of day we passed from free territory 
into a slave State. I was greatly struck with the contrast. The 
beautiful houses, embosomed among trees, nestling in flowers, 
surrounded with a neat garden fence, distinguished for every 
appearance of taste and comfort, were now very seldom to be 
seen. Everything seemed more desolate, uncultivated, pov- 
erty-stricken, judgment-stricken. For more than forty miles I 



50 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



did not see a church or a school-house. I think it was not im- 
agination. I think the fields were more barren, and the or- 
chards more stinted, and the dwellings more comfortless, and 
the whole face # of nature more sad. As the cars stopped to 
take in water in the morning twilight, a whip-poor-will struck 
up his plaintive cry in a neighboring bush — ' Whip-poor-will ! 
whip-poor-will ! ' ' Thou mournful bird ! ' I could not but ex- 
claim, ' Poor Will has been whipped enough already, and if the 
lash could be lifted from his wounded body, and the moral 
scourge from his lacerated soul, these melancholy plaints of 
grief, these thrilling cries of anguish, these visible tokens of 
the Almighty's displeasure, would no longer afflict this fair 
land.' The great subject before the New School Assembly 
was slavery, slavery. The only able speakers whom I heard 
were Dr. Cox, Messrs. Hatfield, Bushnell, Hale, Waterbury, 
Steele, Stevens, and on the other side from the south, Rev. 
Messrs. Campbell and McLane. The men with whom I was 
most dissatisfied, and even disgusted, were the fence men who 
wished to please both parties, to excuse slaveholding and rec- 
ommend abolition, to let in a little light, but to keep all the 
darkness. One man of distinction attempted to sustain his 
position by such an argument as this : ' God never legislated 
for, or tolerated in any form, a state of society which was sin- 
ful in itself ; therefore polygamy, concubinage, divorce, the 
marriage of brother and sister, the marriage of a man to his 
grandmother if he wished it, would not be sinful if God had 
not forbidden them, and were not sinful so long as he permit- 
ted them, and in like manner slavery is not sinful in itself.' 
Another young clergyman had a well- written specimen of log- 
ical absurdity, to show that slavery is control over another's 
will, and as God has given to the parent control over the will 
of his child, and the state control over the criminal will, there- 
fore the relation of slaveholder cannot in itself be sinful. The 
great majority of the Assembly, however, were right on this 
subject, were clear, unequivocal, decided in opinion, that the 
Assembly ought to express its unqualified condemnation of 
slavery, and to exhort the churches to free themselves from all 
connection with it." 

Years after, in an address before the General Association of 
Massachusetts, he referred to this visit in these words: — 

"May I be pardoned for a personal reminiscence? In 1846 
I was a delegate to the Presbyterian Assembly, Old School, both 
bodies meeting in Philadelphia. I was present when the pro- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 51 



posal came from the New School to the Old for fellowship in 
their closing service, around the common table of their com- 
mon Lord. There was no ' chasm ' for them to reach their 
hands across. Yet I heard Dr. Eobert Breckenridge, in a 
speech of great ingenuity and of sophistry, oppose that propo- 
sition. He carried the Assembly with him. They rejected 
the correspondence. They have no ecclesiastical recognition 
of each other to this hour." 

Concerning this Dr. Breckenridge and his brother, Mr. Fos- 
ter wrote during this Philadelphia visit, as follows : — 

" If I had an important cause, a matter of life and death, to 
plead before an august tribunal, I would place it in the hands 
of Dr. R. Breckenridge before any other clergyman whom I 
heard. His voice becomes stronger as he warms up, and while 
his gestures and tones are effective, they are perfectly natural 
and unstudied. He seems to forget himself, his manner, 
and his audience, goes directly to the heart and marrow of 
his subject, and throws out thought after thought, facts, prin- 
ciples, axioms, arguments, with such fertility, that the hearer 
is almost irresistibly led along with him. When I heard him, 
he was arguing a bad cause (against communion with the New 
School Assembly), but he did it most ably ; and though I ached 
to have some one answer him with like power, and though sev- 
eral attempted a reply, speaking even longer than he did, it 
was all weakness in the comparison. He has a brother, Dr. 
Wm. Breckenridge, almost as celebrated as he, and in personal 
appearance far more prepossessing. Both are of medium height 
and slender form. Dr. William has a very fair complexion, a 
high, expansive brow, a ringing, powerful voice. Dr. Robert 
is very dark, has a low forehead, or at least a forehead on which 
the hair grows low, and a weaker and less melodious voice. Dr. 
William is an able debater and preacher, but he cannot, like 
his brother, carry captive an audience." 

In the same visit he wrote further : — 

"I have heard to-day Dr. Young of Kentucky and Dr. Scott 
of New Orleans. It has been to me a peaceful and happy Sab- 
bath. It is a great relief to be exempt from responsibility and 
the necessity of intense thought, and to enjoy the privilege of 
being a listener. And when I sit and drink in the words of 
able and impressive men, it seems like a dream, the thought 
that I have stood at that solemn post, and discussed those 



52 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



mighty themes, and involved myself in the eternal issues which 
must result from such a position. It seems like rash presump- 
tion for me to attempt to preach again. And yet, constrained 
by the love of Christ, and by yearnings for souls, and relying 
upon the divine assurance that weak things in the hand of God 
shall become mighty, it is an unspeakable privilege to preach 
the gospel. My heart is burdened for the spiritual welfare of 
my people. O for the fruits, the fruits of my labors, in the 
edification of the church and the salvation of the impenitent! 
I long with intense desire that the youth may become partakers 
of God's grace, and consecrate themselves to his service. I 
long to see whole families, husbands and wives, parents and 
children, joined in the holy ties of Christian communion, mu- 
tual helpers in the Redeemer's service and work, fellow-travel- 
lers to heaven, their everlasting and blessed home." 

An idea of the quiet yet effective work Mr. Foster did in his 
country parish may be had from a report of its religious con- 
dition, which he read at a meeting of churches in Concord, 
N. H., in 1843. Portions of that report are as follows: — 

"The church in Henniker has received many and rich mer- 
cies during the past year. We are permitted to report happy 
results from efforts made to advance the cause of temperance, 
to support objects of benevolence, to maintain the faith and 
order of the gospel, to impart Sabbath-school instruction, to 
promote union among brethren, to secure attendance upon 
means of grace, to awaken interest upon religious subjects, 
and to lead the impenitent to repentance and to God. 

'•'•Temperance. — More has been accomplished (though not 
more attempted, perhaps) in behalf of temperance than during 
any previous year. Lecturers have been employed from abroad. 
Frequent meetings of the people for free discussion and inter- 
change of thought have been presented, much truth elicited, 
much interest awakened. The number of names on our 
Washingtonian pledge is eight hundred and fifty. Unusual 
preparations are on foot for a temperance celebration of the 
Fourth of July. Hon. Frank Pierce* is to address us. A 
stalled ox is to be furnished for refreshment, and no hatred 
therewith. 

"The injured slave has not been forgotten. A monthly 
concert of prayer for his deliverance, and for the deliverance 

* Afterward President of the United States. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 53 



of the country from the awful sin of oppression, has been 
instituted, and attended by increasing numbers, and with 
augmented solicitude and fervency. 

"Truth and Order. — Millerism has attempted to enter in 
among us, but found no welcome. It has been preached, but 
none received it, believing that secret things belong to God, 
and that the truths and motives which apostles proclaimed 
are best adapted to excite to duty and prepare for death. 
Attempts have been made, but with no success, to create a 
party hostile to religion and government, under the disguise of 
friendship to the slave, or rather, without any disguise at all. 

" Sabbath-school. — Our school is large, and is regarded as 
one of our happiest means of spiritual improvement. Teach- 
ers' meetings have recently been established, and much is 
expected from them. 

"Revival. — When internal difficulties had been healed, a 
measure of divine influence was soon bestowed. Universal 
seriousness had prevailed, and some instances of conversion 
had occurred in one district of the town, weeks before ; but 
with the restoration of union and love in the church, the 
blessing was at once more widely diffused ; the hearts of Chris- 
tians were quickened in heavenly affections ; spirituality was 
increased, and a sense of dependence upon God ; deeper solici- 
tude was felt for souls; meetings for prayer and Christian 
conference were more frequently held and more fully attended, 
and pervaded with more evident solemnity and engagedness. 
The starting tear, expressions of concern, and the voice of 
inquiry began to be seen and heard, as one, and another, and 
another became convinced of sin and anxious for salvation. 
And soon, while sin was lamented and self renounced, the lan- 
guage of trust and gratitude and praise was heard from trem- 
bling yet joyful lips. In the course of a few weeks almost all 
the male members of the church went out by two and two, 
visiting from house to house, thus exerting and receiving a 
most salutary influence." 

In addition to the two sermons, and a prayer-meeting at 
which Mr. Foster always spoke, on Sunday, he sustained on 
Thursday evenings a preaching service at some one of the 
outlying districts in the town. Although this was much of a 
tax upon his strength, yet he felt it was greatly favorable to 
the best religious condition of the community. 

The care of a first pastorate is always a great strain upon 



54 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

a young man. In the case of Mr. Foster, an unusually sensi- 
tive temperament and an enfeebled frame made the burden 
greater than he could bear; and after five and a half years of 
constant labor, he felt that he must have relief in a change of 
location. He suffered constantly with severe headaches and 
great lassitude. Accordingly, to the regret of his people and 
with great sorrow on his own part, he resigned, and was dis- 
missed Jan. 7, 1847. Years after, reviewing this pastorate, he 
thus expressed himself regarding it : — 

" My removal from Henniker was unanticipated, unpremed- 
itated, undesired, painful to my own heart, mysterious. My 
esteemed and beloved people were not in fault. I look back 
with gratitude and delight to those years, so swiftly passed, 
which were spent with you. Especially do I give daily thanks 
for those kind friends whom God gave me there, whose love 
and aid have been my choice blessing, my solace in every sub- 
sequent storm, and will be through life. There are many souls 
in Henniker whom I shall meet in eternity under circumstances 
and with feelings of unspeakable solemnity and interest. May 
God prepare us all for that meeting, and make it joyful to 
every one of us." 



V.— Pastorate at Pelham, N. H 

1847 — 1853. 

When Mr. Foster left Henniker he took with him suitable 
credentials. It is of the utmost importance, both to the min- 
istry and the churches, that deserving men be carefully authen- 
ticated. The subject of ministerial standing, especially in 
relation to the best methods of certifying to such standing, 
has been much mooted of late. There is an interesting con- 
tribution to ecclesiastical history, if not a valuable suggestion 
for modern needs, in the fact that Mr. Foster, in leaving his 
charge, was provided, among other papers, with a document 
from the General Association of New Hampshire, as follows : — 

" Dartmouth College, Jan. 12, 1847. 
" This certifies that Rev. Eden B. Foster, late pastor of the 
Congregational Church in Henniker, N". H., is a regular and 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 55 

well-appointed minister of the gospel. Mr. Foster's literary 
and professional qualifications are of a high order. He is 
understood to be of soundly orthodox principles, and an 
able and effective preacher and administrator. It gives me 
pleasure to commend him to the confidence and favor of the 
churches. Signed, N. Loed, 

President Dartmouth College, and one of the Committee of the General 
Association of New Hampshire to certify the standing of ministers 
about leaving the State. 

After leaving Henniker, Mr. Foster was for a time without 
any prospects for the future. He was adrift, his income 
stopped, a wife and two children to be provided for, debts 
incurred during his education hanging upon him, his health 
uncertain, without a home and with no assurance of one. It 
was a time of great anxiety. One who has seen a baggage 
train of army wagons filing by all day long, or men standing 
in a long line for their turn at a ticket office, knows how diffi- 
cult it is to force one's way into the procession. He who falls 
out does not easily get in again. Mr. Foster felt all this, but 
his notions of what was honorable were such that he would 
not seek another place before he had severed his connection 
with the first. In this he was undoubtedly unduly, sensitive, 
but such was his feeling, and in consequence he sedulously 
avoided anything that might look like business shrewdness or 
self-seeking. He deliberately chose to cut entirely loose from 
all past associations and obligations before looking elsewhere 
for a home, lest the effort to find another charge might seem 
dishonorable to those he was then serving. But in this, though 
anxious, as any one would be, he was sustained by faith in God. 
A letter to his wife at this time is as follows : — 

"I trust, my dearest, that your cares will not make you sick. 
Anxieties oppress my own mind sometimes, and fears affright 
me. I know that you must feel a deep solicitude and concern. 
Yet let us cheer one another. Let us pray for one another. 
With steadfast, changeless love, with high and holy trust, let 
us bear up. We are tried as by fire, — may we come forth 
from the furnace as gold refined. Jehovah Jireh, — the Lord 
will provide. The Redeemer's grace is infinite ; God's power 
has neither limit nor bound." 



56 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

In June, 1847, he went to Pelham, N. H., to preach as a 
candidate. While thus occupied he wrote to his wife, after 
the first and second Sabbaths respectively, as follows: — 

" I am pleased with the place, and so far as I have seen, with 
the people. If the people are pleased, and there is a prospect 
of support (and Providence seems so to order), I should like 
to stay here. I think it is a place where a faithful minister 
may be useful and happy. I think it is as wide and influential 
a field as I deserve or can get. If I can live and labor and die 
here, and be so highly privileged as to be an instrument in the 
hands of God of advancing the triumphs of the truth and 
building u]3 this church and winning souls to Christ, I am and 
shall be content. I ask no higher honor, — I seek no richer 
reward. If I can disencumber myself of debt, and provide 
for my family, and do something to comfort my feeble and 
afflicted parents, it is all I ask of earthly reward. I come here 
as I went to Heuniker, — with a most lively and almost appall- 
ing sense of insufficiency. To deal with the welfare of im- 
mortal souls, to have a moulding hand either for good or evil 
upon the character of a whole congregation of undying spirits, 
throws upon me a responsibility which crushes me down with 
its overpowering weight. O for a more living, clinging, appro- 
priating faith ! Pray for me, my dear wife, that the strength 
of God may be made perfect in my weakness. To take a part 
in that great negotiation which brought the Saviour down to 
earth, and which God is carrying on by so many agencies and 
such mighty means, is a position so solemn and so fearful that 
sometimes I shrink from it with an overwhelming sense of 
weakness and un worthiness. 

" I feel unworthy to walk in the footsteps of Dr. Church, 
and stand in the breach which was made in Zion's walls when 
he fell. If I can satisfy this people and do them good, I shall 
have cause to rejoice and bless my heavenly Father. It is 
painful, beyond expression, to leave the dear people at Henni- 
ker. May God bless them, and send them a much better min- 
ister than they have lost ! " 

" I have had a happy Sabbath. I trust that God has been 
with me, that His arm has been about me, holding me up, and 
that His banner over me has been love. I have had in most 
of the exercises of the day enlargement of mind and desire, 
and a sense of God's presence to an unusual degree. I have 
preached twice ; in the afternoon an extemporaneous sermon 
prepared during the week. Oh, it is sweet to lean upon God, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 57 

and to labor for Him, and to seek His love as the sole reward. 
I am afraid that I do not estimate aright my responsibilities, 
or live up to my privileges. I am afraid that I know but 
little of the faith and the fear, the love and the trust, the self- 
loathing and the holy living of such souls as Baxter and 
Edwards and Payson and Brainard and Martyn ; yet I humbly 
hope that God has given me some knowledge of His love, and 
that He will show me greater things than these, and strengthen 
me for the solemn and arduous services to which He calls me. 
I know that the pulpit appears to me a very solemn place. 
My heart ^sometimes faints, and my knees totter, and my whole 
frame trembles, when I rise to proclaim the message of the 
great God. Who is sufficient for these things? Oh, that 
divine strength might be illustrated and made perfect in my 
weakness ! If my weak and imperfect labors can be made 
instrumental, by my humble and constant waiting upon God, 
in the salvation of souls, my heart shall be tilled with joy." 

An invitation to preach in Pelham for a year was given him 
immediately after the second Sabbath of his candidacy, and he 
at once accepted it. But the worldly advantages of this open- 
ing at Pelham, were not large. He was to receive only $500 
for the first year's services. But the place was open, and it 
gratified his desire for a quiet life and a confiding j^eoj^le. He 
thought he should be tempting Providence to decline it, and 
treating the church unhandsomely to delay his answer while 
looking about for another parish ; so he accepted the invitation 
without a further question. Five days after, he received a very 
complimentary letter from St. Johnsbury, Vt., opening to him 
there the prospect of a much larger salary and a much wider 
field of usefulness. Had it come earlier, he would gladly have 
accepted the offer ; but it was now too late, and he had no 
regrets over the fact. He was entirely contented with the 
spot providentially allotted him. He took up his work in 
Pelham with eager anticipations of privilege. He found warm- 
hearted friends and helpers in his new parish, and was always 
contented and thankful in the opportunities of usefulness given 
him among them. 

Pelham is a small town on the southern border of New 
Hampshire, six miles north of Lowell, Mass. It is mainly 



58 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

located on the bed of a prehistoric lake, which in some un- 
known age covered a space some six or eight miles in length 
and three miles in width. This ancient lake-bottom is now a 
level reach of sand, through which meanders sluggishly, as if 
loath to leave the overhanging willows and grassy meadows 
along its banks, a shallow stream known as Beaver Brook. In 
the middle of this sandy plain is an old-fashioned public com- 
mon, where half-a-dozen roads meet, and where stand, besides 
a dozen farm-houses and a store, all facing a common centre, 
two churches, one a modern structure, and the other an ancient 
building, then used only as a town hall. This latter edifice, 
however, still retained the curious paraphernalia of earlier 
days, — the square pews, with seats on three sides that turned 
up when the congregation rose to pray, and came down with 
a noise like a volley of musketry when prayer was ended ; the 
high galleries running round the house just under the roof; the 
lofty box pulpit ; the huge sounding-board, hanging over it by 
a single iron rod, far more threatening than the sword of Dam- 
ocles to the minister who stood beneath. In this ancient edifice 
Rev. Dr. John H. Church had ministered for many long years, 
and had exerted a wide influence in religion, education, and 
politics in southern New Hampshire. 

At the time Mr. Foster came to Pelham, the parish was 
small and constantly decreasing. Manufacturing towns were 
springing up along the Merrimack River, which in a great 
curve flowed around the town, and so could be reached not 
many miles away, both to the west and to the south. In con- 
sequence, the young people of Pelham, and even its more sub- 
stantial families, were leaving, one after another, for places of 
greater life and prosperity. Such has been the drain on this 
quiet nook in the country, that to-day very few remain of those 
to whom Mr. Foster ministered in 1847. And yet, in spite of 
these discouragements and this seeming lack of incentive, Mr. 
Foster labored as faithfully as if he stood at the centre of the 
world's life. His motive power was within him, in his own 
high ideal of the ministry and his burning desire for souls. 

On the 21st of June, 1848, he was installed pastor of the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 59 

church, remaining in this position till his dismissal, Jan. 18, 
1853. When he became a settled pastor, his salary was in- 
creased a hundred dollars, making it the same that he had 
received at Henniker. Among the letters he received at this 
time is one from an uncle, who speaks of his receiving "a 
loud call" to Pelham, and as salaries in country parishes in 
those days ranged from $350 to $700, the uncle was quite in 
earnest. The sum seems small to us, but it was supplemented 
by the frequent gifts of a generous people, who, according to 
the custom of the times, brought in the produce of their farms 
and sometimes sums of money for their loved pastor. 

During these years nothing was more marked than his tender 
interest in all his family friends. He writes thus to his father : 

"I enjoyed my visit at home very much, for which I am 
grateful to God and to you. My mind was occupied often 
with the thought that it might be the last time. Your health, 
my dearest parents, is impaired and precarious. Old age is 
creeping upon you early and rapidly. I hope that your last 
days will be serene and happy, that your communion with 
Christ will be intimate and constant, heart-refreshing, soul- 
sustaining, that His grace will be revealed to you in all its 
wonders, and that heaven will come very near to you before 
you leave this earth." 

He is deeply interested in his brothers, some of whom were 
then pursuing their studies in the Theological Seminary at 
Andover, and he says concerning one of them, " I have offered 
to him money to pay half of his bank debt, if he will go to 
Andover this fall. I am willing to incur almost any load and 
run almost any risk for myself, rather than see all his plans and 
prospects ruined." Another letter to a brother in the Semi- 
nary is of value as showing the kind of reading which then 
interested him. 

" I write you a line at this time to indicate the hope that we 
shall see you and R. and B. soon, and to say that if you can 
bring me down a few volumes for winter use, it will be a 
particular favor. Among the books which I have not, and 
which I should be much interested in reading, are the follow- 
ing, and somewhat in the following order : — 



60 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



"1. Lamartine's Girondists, Prescott's Histories, Mack- 
intosh's Life and Corresj^ondence, Henry Ware's Life and 
Works, Alison's Miscellanies, Channing's Life and Works, 
Chalmers' Miscellanies, Judge Story's Miscellanies, Ver- 
planck's Miscellanies. 

"2. O. Dewey's Discourses, Griswold's American Prose 
Writers, Griswold's Poets, Morell's Philosophy, Howitt's 
Homes and Haunts of Poets, Mackintosh's Miscellanies, 
Webster's Speeches, Stephens' Miscellanies, Bryant's Poems, 
Southey's Poems, etc. 

"Some half-a-dozen of these will be to me a great treat, or 
if you cannot get these, you can get others perhaps equally 
interesting." 

During this period he had two children born to him, — 
Charles Alfred Dewey and Edward Payson ; but one was 
smitten with sickness, when in his second year, and died after 
a brief illness ; and after the other had reached the same 
age, he was similarly taken. Words cannot describe the 
intensity of loving anxiety with which the father, no less than 
the mother, hung over these children, and strove, though 
vainly, to fan the flickering spark of life back into flame. 
He thus expresses himself in regard to the birth of the one, 
and the death of the other : — 

" April 19, 1849. 

" Dear Parents, — I suppose you have no objection to have 
your posterity increased, provided they are as good as some 
of their ancestors. I have the pleasure, therefore, to inform 
you that, in the kind providence of God, you are once more 
the grandparents of a fine, stout boy. He was born on 
Wednesday, the 18th hist. We detect in him resemblances 
to a great number of distinguished individuals. He has his 
mother's black hair, and his father's black face. He has the 
blue eyes of the Pinneos, and the same ability to make an 
impressive proclamation of his ideas. He lacks not for dignity 
of gesture, or vigor of speech, or awe-inspiring frown. He 
has his grandmother's chin and perpendicular features, his 
grandfather's forehead, his aunt's interesting, generous counte- 
nance, Uncle C.'s and Uncle D.'s bump of independence, and 
we doubt not that he will have the wit of Uncle D., the elo- 
quence of Uncle R., the judge-like candor of Uncle B., the 
easy manners of Uncle E. We do not forget his other uncles 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 61 



and relatives, either paternal or maternal ; but time does not 
permit me to trace all the parallelisms. He weighs only ten 
pounds and a quarter, and his mental powers seem to be on 
the same scale of magnitude. His mother and Aunt S. wish 
to have him called Charles Alfred, in order to keep in 
fresh remembrance and undecaying perpetuity the names and 
the merits of the dear, absent Californians. My own mind 
balances between two or three different appellations. I like 
this name very much. I look out upon the beauties and pros- 
pects of this opening and hopeful season of the year, and I 
feel disposed to call him April Blossom. I have been greatly 
interested in Macaulay's History of England, and the noble 
sketches which be draws of Puritan character, and I should 
like to have a John Hampden in the family. I remember the 
benefit and the happiness I once derived from the society of a 
dearly beloved friend, and I find great attractions in the name 
Wright Dewey. But the name is of less consequence than the 
character. Whatever name he bears, may it be written in the 
Lamb's book of life, and he be early sanctified and spared to 
live for Christ and to serve His cause. Pray for us, my 
beloved parents, and for our children, that we may have new 
measures of wisdom and grace under the new responsibilities 
laid upon us, and that these precious souls whom God has given 
us, may be jewels forever in the Redeemer's crown." 

"August 5, 1852. 
"Dear Parents, — 'It is well with the child.' He sleeps 
where pain shall no more rack the body, nor grief oppress the 
mind, nor sin afflict the soul. He has been a child of sorrows 
from his birth, startled by surprises, assailed by diseases, dis- 
tressed by many pains. The usual diseases incident to child- 
hood attacked him by turns, till now a disorder more terrible 
than all seized him, and death has triumphed over him. His 
final sickness, especially the last half of it, was exceedingly 
painful, I think even more so than that of our other little one. 
He was conscious till within an hour of his death, and turned 
upon us his placid and loving eye whenever we spoke to him. 
He was an interesting child, I think I may say, without a 
father's blind partiality. His intellect was active, his feelings 
were sensitive, and his entire temperament was of the nervous 
and excitable order. I never saw a child who had more of 
the disposition and faculty of imitation. He would mimic, 
with great precision and beautiful art, our tones, our looks, 
our gestures, our attitudes. In throwing ball, playing with 
marbles, assorting buttons, pointing out pictures, driving the 



62 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



children for his horse, leading us by the fingers to the table 
when he wanted food, and in various forms of pantomime, by 
which he expressed his wants, in the lack of words, his inge- 
nuity was a delight, and sometimes a wonder, to us if to 
nobody else. But God has taken him. Another dart pene- 
trates our spirit, another wound is inflicted upon our bruised 
and bleeding hearts. Our house is lonely, our hearts are deso- 
late and sad. We hope we are not stubborn and rebellious 
under God's dispensations ; bat this affliction is a very great 
and severe one to us. We trust that we are thankful for 
the remembrances of the past. We bless God that such a 
child has been given us so long, that such an angel of our 
blood and name is now before the throne. We bless God for 
the confident belief that our two departed infants are now 
twin cherubs in heaven, joining hand in hand and voice with 
voice in the high service and songs of the blessed. May God 
prepare us to join them in their holy employments and 
ecstatic delights." 



In 1851 Mr. Foster received a call from the Central Church, 
Lawrence, Mass. He accepted this call, subject to the advice 
of council. The council, however, advised against his going, 
and he deferred to its judgment and withdrew his acceptance. 
The Lawrence people were not content to leave the matter 
thus, and renewed their call, but in vain. His own people 
rallied to his aid and relieved him from pecuniary embarrass- 
ments resulting from the death of his two youngest children, 
the severe and protracted sickness of his tAvo eldest, and a fire 
which drove him and his family from his house into the snow 
at midnight. Not only did they repair the house, replace a 
portion of the furniture, and bring him several loads of wood, 
they also made up for him a considerable purse of money. 
Because of these great kindnesses he felt under obligations to 
them, and he would not leave them. 

But it was not in God's purpose that he spend his life in the 
retirement of this small pastorate. Towards the close of 1852 
he received a call to the John-street Congregational Church 
in Lowell, Mass. ; but shrinking from the responsibilities of the 
charge, and deeming himself incompetent to assume them, he 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 63 

declined to go. The call was renewed, however, and was 
urged with such kindness, and so many assurances in the way 
of encouragement, that his objections were overcome. He 
accepted the call, and was dismissed from his pastorate in 
Pelham, Jan. 18, 1853. A fitting summing up of his work in 
Pelham, is kindly furnished by tl]e Rev. Augustus Berry, his 
successor. 

" As it is now nearly thirty years since the conclusion of Dr. 
Foster's ministry in Pelham, it is almost impossible to learn 
anything about that ministry from the present population. 
Those to whom he ministered have nearly all passed away, and 
only a few, comparatively, of the present population remem- 
ber him. The time of his ministry was the commencement of 
essential changes that have taken place in the substantial fami- 
lies of the town, by deaths and emigration. At that time 
there was a large number who highly appreciated and enjoyed 
Mr. Foster's efforts, admired him as a man and Christian 
minister, and were proud of him as a citizen. The people 
were drawn to his pulpit ministrations. His sermons, so rich 
in thought and illustration, of such rhetorical beauty and 
power, so spiritual, so tender, and faithful to the eternal in- 
terests of men, bound the listeners as by a spell. 

His ministry at Pelham was at a time when the question of 
slavery was beginning to profoundly agitate the nation, and 
the forces were marshalling for the conflict that had its issues 
in the civil war. He spoke openly and boldly on this question. 
His utterances were unmistakable. They came from the deep 
convictions of his heart, but they were in such a spirit that 
men were compelled to listen, and could not take offence. He 
embraced everything here in his labors that pertained to the 
welfare of the people. He served on the school committee, 
and imparted the inspiration of his own literary spirit and love 
of education to the children by his interesting and earnest 
talks to them. The town lyceum was at that time both an 
entertainment and an intellectual force among the people.* He 
gave it his time and strength, and imparted not merely an 
interest, but charm, to its exercises. 

" He remembered that he was among an agricultural people, 
and he gave to their chief interest his thought and study, 
and delivered agricultural addresses of great merit. He won 
the affections of the people, so that it was their delight to con- 
sider his wants, to meet him in his family, and entertain him 



64 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



and his family in their homes. They were jealous of the in- 
terest that some other churches took in him, and to the limit 
of their ability resisted the desirable calls given him elsewhere, 
and his pastorate of nearly five years among this people was 
terminated with the regret and sorrow of the entire popu- 
lation. 

"There were additions to the church during his ministry, 
and he undoubtedly sowed much seed that has since matured 
and been garnered. I think the feeling of the people towards 
Dr. Foster may be expressed in the brief sentence, 'They loved 
him ! ' The mightiest influences are the subtlest and least ob- 
served. I think this may be said to be characteristic of the 
ministry of Dr. Foster. The influence of it is a living and 
persistent force." 



VI. — First Pastorate in Lowell, Mass. 

1853 — 1861. 

The circumstances under which Mr. Foster came to be 
invited to Lowell, are told by himself in his sermon at the 
fortieth anniversary of the John-street Church, held in 1879. 
These are his words : — 

"In coming to Lowell I was led, as it seemed to me, by prov- 
idential indications. On the first Sabbath of October, 1852, I 
had agreed upon an exchange of pulpits with Eev. Dr. Child, 
of the First Church in this city. A great rain was falling on 
the morning of that clay. As the same horse was to convey us 
both to our respective places of labor, and as I was suffering 
from influenza and hoarseness, I thought it not wise to sally 
forth. The exchange took place on the last Sabbath of the 
month. Two days previous, Daniel Webster died, and on 
the Sabbath lay in his shroud. The event was referred to in 
nearly every pulpit in the land, with emotion everywhere, — 
with tearful emotion throughout New England. I stopped 
with -Hon. Linus Child, and some words of mine, I know not 
what, touched his great heart and his great mind. It was 
through his recommendation that I was introduced to the 
John-street pulpit." 

On the morning of Nov. 14, 1852, he preached for the first 
time in the John-street Church, choosing for his text, "Run, 
speak to that young man!" The John-street people heard 




ea 



c=3 ~ 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 65 

him only this one Sabbath, but with great unanimity and 
heartiness extended him a call to become their pastor. He 
was installed Feb. 3, 1853. At that day Lowell had a popula- 
tion of between twenty and thirty thousand. Nearly all the 
great corporations now established there were then in exist- 
ence, and the system of canals and water-power was complete. 
The city has since grown to more than twice the size, mainly by 
the building of additional mills on the grounds of these corpor- 
ations, and by the fortunate introduction of a large number 
of small private manufactories. But the city, then as now, 
was filled with industrious, orderly, intelligent mechanics and 
operatives, together with the shop-keepers, professional men, 
civil engineers, journalists, and others who were drawn to- 
gether to serve so great a company. The city was a hive 
of busy life, not as rich as now, but full of God-fearing people, 
and crowded with men and women of active brains and inde- 
pendent thought. In such a field of labor Mr. Foster, matured 
by twelve years of ministerial experience, in his very prime, 
being thirty-nine years of age, entered on what proved to be 
the scene of his chief toils and triumphs in the ministry. 

The John-street Church was then one of five Congregational 
churches within the city limits, and the third in the order of 
formation. It was organized in 1839, with two hundred and 
forty-three members. It had had but one pastor previous to 
Mr. Foster's coming, the Rev. S. W. Hanks. " The church," 
wrote one of the committee to Mr. Foster, in urging his accept- 
ance of the call, "has always been a working church, charac- 
terized as such at home and abroad. It contains a large pro- 
portion of active members. About fifty male members and 
one hundred and fifty or more female members belong to it. 
There was nearly this number present when action was taken 
in reference to calling Rev. Mr. Foster, all voting, male and 
female, by rising." Under such favorable auspices Mr. Foster 
began his work. He gave his strength to his sermons, rightly 
deeming that if a minister failed of power there, he failed 
everywhere ; and that whatever else must be neglected in con- 
sequence, his pulpit influence must, if possible, be maintained. 



66 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER, 

" During eight years and a half," says Rev. J. B. Seabury, in a 
historical sermon, "he preached the gospel with eminent power 
and persuasiveness. His labors as a student were almost un- 
paralleled. It was his custom in those days to prepare four 
written discourses a week, three for each Sabbath and one for 
the weekly evening lecture." It did not take long for him to 
get into the harness and to find himself carrying a load under 
which a man of less energy and activity of mind would have 
staggered. What he was doing may be gathered from a 
letter written to his father towards the close of his first year 
in Lowell : — 

" I have been suffering for three weeks past with a very 
severe cold. At the same time I have had an unusual amount 
of labor to perform, and shall have for some days to come. I 
am writing a series of discourses to young people. Three of 
these have been delivered. The first, on 'The Bible as the 
Guide of Youth ' ; the second, on ' The Elements of a Noble 
Character'; the third, on 'The True Objects of Life.' I have 
one to prepare for Sabbath after next, on ' The True Means of 
Securing these Objects.' I have engaged to deliver a lyceum 
lecture at Carlisle a week from this evening, and this week 
must be devoted to preparation. Last week I preached two 
installation sermons, one at Stratham, N. H., at the installation 
of Rev. Mr. Steele, a former pupil at Pembroke. My subject 
was, 'The Office and Obligation of the Church as the Pillar 
and Ground of the Truth.' The other sermon was at Salem, 
1ST. H., at the installation of Rev. Mr. Page, late of Hudson, 
with whom I have often exchanged; subject, 'The Minister's 
Great Aim, and the Means of its Accomplishment.' These 
engagements were made before I was in my present state of 
pulmonary debility, and I cannot well avoid them. I do not 
design to engage myself for any more extras this winter. I 
have enough to do at home. For example, I have a meeting 
for every evening of this week except Saturday, and on Wed- 
nesday I have one to attend in the afternoon and evening both. 
If I had not efficient helpers and indulgent hearers, I should 
sink. I sometimes think I shall be obliged to relinquish such 
responsibilities.' ' 

This variety and amount of work were continued through- 
out Mr, Foster's pastorate in Lowell, until at last a naturally 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 67 

strong constitution and a vigorous brain could bear the strain 
no longer, and he was forced to stay his hand and find relief 
in a change of location. Some extracts from his letters at 
different dates during this period of his life will illustrate the 
energy with which he was spending his days. 

" August 31, 1858. 
" I have a great amount of labor before me for the autumn. 
I must write more new sermons than I have for the last year. 
I design to commence immediately a course of monthly ser- 
mons on the Christian Home ; also another series, to be 
preached as convenience permits, on the Evangelical Doctrines. 
I have three special sermons, one on the Atlantic Cable, one 
on Home Missions, and one for the United Service, all of 
which must be written, if possible, in September." 

"January 29, 1859. 

" My Dearest A , — I am very tired to-night, but I am 

not likely to have any time to-morrow to write to you, and 
after to-morrow my whole week will be full of toil : Tuesday, 
journey to Northampton ; Tuesday night, spent in visiting my 
daughter Emily ; Wednesday, examination of the pastor-elect 
at Pittsfield ; Wednesday evening, a religious lecture ; Thurs- 
day, installation sermon at eleven o'clock; Thursday evening, 
address before the Young Men's Christian Association, the 
same one I delivered here in 1855 ; Friday, home again, 
one hundred and thirty miles by railroad ; Friday evening, 
lecture in my church as usual ; Saturday, preparation for the 
Sabbath, a whole week's work; Sunday, Feb. 5, my anni- 
versary sermon, six years from the date of my settlement. 
That is my programme for seven days to come, ' a pretty con- 
siderable, right-smart chance of work,' as the Westerners 
would say. I have preached to-day three times : forenoon, 
forty minutes, on ' Man's Need and Riches of God's Mercy,' 
text Phil. 4 : 19 ; afternoon, on 'Lessons drawn from History 
of Persian Magi following the Star,' text Matt. 2:2; evening, 
twenty-five minutes extemporaneous, on ' The Church, God's 
Spiritual Temple,' text Eph. 2 : 21. I made a blunder in 
announcing the second head in the afternoon, and that mistake 
embarrassed me all the way. Rev. Dr. Lord, president of 
Dartmouth College, came in to hear me, and that completed 
my discomfiture. Oh, that I could fling off these trammels of 
diffidence and agitating fear! We had the largest number to- 
night at our conference-meeting that we have had for three 



68 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



months, and the meeting was very impressive and solemn. 
Three inquirers were in the library-room meeting last Tuesday 
night. I have prepared for the installation next Thursday a 
discourse on ' Christian Independence in the Minister,' text, 
1 Cor. 7:23. I. Cherish independent thought. II. Act as 
the Servant of Christ. III. Means of reaching these results : 
1. A holy life; 2. Unity of aim; 3. Moral courage; 4. 
Growth in knowledge ; 5. Christian charity ; 6. Patient hope. 
The sermon does not satisfy me at all. My head is weary 
and confused, and I may not rightly judge, but it seems to 
me to lack that logical coherence and unity which should bind 
all the parts into a perfect whole. I look forward to the 
labors and the results of the week with great anxiety." 

The same month he writes to his daughter : — 

"I am very tired to-day, for I preached yesterday a sermon 
which cost me nineteen hours of consecutive, constant writing. 
The whole previous week was spent in gathering the thoughts 
and facts and method of the sermon. My subject was ' Wo- 
man's Mission,' illustrated in four particulars : 1. To educate 
herself; 2. To educate the young; 3. To cultivate religious 
excellences; 4. To make home happy. A sublime mission, 
and in a vast number of instances nobly has she accom- 
plished it." 

During this whole period he was constantly called on for all 
kinds of outside work in the city and out of it. He cheer- 
fully responded to these calls as far as he was able, believing 
not only that he was bound to further the cause of Christ out- 
side the limits of his own parish as far as he had influence and 
strength, but that the interests of his own people were 
advanced, and his influence over them was increased, by what- 
ever reputation these outside efforts might give him. 

These calls for extra-parochial duties took on a great variety. 
There were sermons, or other parts, at ordinations and instal- 
lations, in great number ; there were literary lectures at lyce- 
ums and in church courses ; there were special sermons to 
young men ; there were temperance addresses, essays before 
church conferences, political sermons and addresses, educa- 
tional addresses, orations before schools and colleges ; together 
with many newspaper articles, which at this time he frequently 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 69 

contributed to the Congregationalism and to the daily papers 
of Lowell. A hint of what he was constantly doing in this 
direction may be gained from the following extracts from his 
letters. 

" September 29, 1858. 

" On Monday I have agreed to preach a sermon in Manches- 
ter, Mass. On Tuesday I am to attend an installation in the 
same place, and am appointed substitute preacher, if Rev. Dr. 
Stone, of Boston, fails. I have been invited to address an 
agricultural society in Pepperell on Thursday, Oct. 7, but 
have sent a negative answer. Some of my peo23le are very 
anxious that I should go down to Newburyport to address a 
Sabbath-school convention, which is to be held on Wednesday 
and Thursday of next week. 

"The meeting of the young men, last Sabbath evening, 
went much beyond my expectations, and was greatly encour- 
aging. I seemed to have divine assistance in the services of 
the day beyond my hopes. 

"I have sent, this week, three articles for publication in the 
Congregationalism entitled as follows : ' The Revival of 1858 ' ; 
' Doctrinal Purity and Church Prosj^erity ' ; 'Is it Peace or 
War?' They will probably appear (perhaps in the editorial 
columns) sometime in the course of this month. I have also 
sent to the Courier, of this city, an article on Filibusterism." 

"Lowell, Sept. 29, 1859. 

" I preached my temperance sermon last Monday evening in 
Huntington Hall, to an audience filling all the seats and most 
of the standing room. It was a most laborious effort. It 
always requires the last outlay of my strength to be heard in 
that house, and for days afterward I feel as if all my life- 
springs were exhausted." 

" October 13, 1859. 

"I received yesterday a letter containing a fifty-dollar bill, 
with the following explanation : ' Mr. Foster : Please accept 
this sum from the friends of temperance, as a slight testimo- 
nial of the approbation with which your valuable lecture was 
received, delivered in Huntington Hall on Sunday evening, 
Sept. 25, 1859.' The sermon has been requested for publica- 
tion, and will soon appear in print. In the midst of my disa- 
bilities and fears I have some weighty cause for gratitude and 
hope." 



70 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

The five Congregational churches of Lowell were at that 
time in the closest affiliation. A united service was held 
monthly, by turn, in the different churches, at which all the 
ministers were present, — the pastor of the church in which the 
service was held preaching the sermon. Through this most 
admirable practice the New Testament idea of one church in 
one community, though worshipping in many places, was prac- 
tically attained, so far as the Congregational churches were 
concerned. These five were brought into such sympathy and 
relationship, that they worked as one and took counsel con- 
stantly for the interests of the common cause. The minis- 
terial force in these churches was at that time a strong one, 
— Rev. Willard Child, d. d., with the First Church ; Rev. J. 
P. Cleaveland, d. d., with the Appleton-street Church ; Rev. 
Amos Blanchard, d. d., with the Kirk-street Church ; Rev. 
Joseph H. Towne, and afterwards Rev. Owen Street (since then 
receiving the honorary degree of D. D. from Yale College), 
with the High-street Church. These brethren worked in per- 
fect harmony, meeting every Monday in Dr. Blanchard's study 
to consult together. Among these ministers and churches Mr. 
Foster held an honored and influential position. He shrank 
from publicity, and was too sincerely humble ever to push 
himself to the front ; but he was constantly solicited and urged 
to public duties, and was too conscientious to refuse when he 
saw a prospect of usefulness. He was deeply interested in all 
that concerned the public welfare, and believed that the pulpit 
should be used as much as the press in shaping public opinion 
on all great questions of the day. He was glad, also, to keep 
himself fresh and out of ruts ; to speak and write, as far as 
time and strength permitted, for occasions outside his pulpit. 
Having this spirit, he was" to an unusual degree a public man. 
The citizens of Lowell, without distinction of church or party, 
respected him, and sought opportunities to hear him. As the 
years went by, and his consistent and beautiful life was seen, 
and his work recognized, he became generally kifown and sin- 
cerely loved. 

He commenced his ministry in Lowell in a time of great 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 71 

political agitation. It was just after the death of Webster, 
in the midst of the antislavery conflict, and when the battle 
over the Fugitive Slave Law and the extension of slavery 
through the territories, and other similar questions, was the 
hottest. Mr. Foster was not a man to be silent at such a time. 
On June 25, 1854, he preached two sermons, one on " The 
Eights of the Pulpit," justifying the ministry in protesting 
against these outrages on civil liberty ; the other on " The 
Perils of Freedom," discussing the dangers to the republic in 
the extension of slavery. These sermons were published at 
the request of his people. Concerning them he wrote : — 

" Since coming to Hanover, I have seen a notice taken from 
the Boston Bee, which speaks of the sermons as ' making the 
fur fly around the ears of conservative hearers in a manner 
truly awful.' It is a slang phrase, but it gives an entirely false 
impression of the discourses, as controversial, aggressive, 
denunciatory. I feel, and my friends here feel, that in some 

way or other, the sermons ought to be placed before Mr. 

and Mr. , and some other leading and most estimable men 

of Lowell who were friendly to the compromises of 1850, that 
they may understand that I made no assault upon that class 
of men, and had not the most distant thought of questioning, 
in any form or any degree, their patriotism, or wisdom, or 
nobleness. I have supposed, and suppose still, that those men 
are among the most decided to disapprove of the Nebraska 
Law, and in the positions which I took I supposed I should 
have their entire concurrence. Certainly I have not taken 
any position more ultra than those taken by Dr. Gannett of 
Boston, and Dr. Stearns of Cambridge, and some of the most 
eminent and reliable statesmen of the land in their published 
sermons and addresses." 

Other political events followed in rapid succession. In 
1856 were the troubles in Kansas and the assault on Senator 
Sumner by Preston S. Brooks. Concerning the stand he took 
. relative to these events, he wrote thus : — 

•< May 29, 1856. 

"My Dear Father, — I hope that you are well. Of course 

you cannot be happy. The darkest day our country has yet 

known is upon us. Clouds and thick darkness, fire, blood, and 

smoke, man's wrath and God's vengeance are on our track, as 



72 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

the terrible monsoon of the desert overtakes the fated cara- 
van. Sumner is beaten on the head with a heavy cane until 
he is senseless, and he is probably soon to die ; Kansas is 
crushed by the armed forces of Slavery ; freemen will all be 
murdered or driven out thence, and the State is doomed to 
bondage. The South, by her presses and her assemblies, are 
sustaining the assassin Brooks. Threats of personal violence 
and of a wider vengeance are coming from the South. Mem- 
bers of Congress are arming. Pierce is an infatuated tool of 
Slavery. Never, never, did we stand in the midst of such fear- 
ful portents overshadowing the nation. Never, never, was 
there such cause for wise counsels, fervent prayers, and right- 
eous action on the part of free men and free women. Reli- 
gious Liberty lies wounded, faint, and bleeding to death. Free 
Speech staggers under a mighty paralysis, struck by the blow 
which leveled Sumner to the ground. I preached last Sab- 
bath one hour on the parricidal blow which has fallen upon the 
sacred cause of piety and republicanism in our land and in all 
the world. It was all written after Friday morning, under a 
pressure of anxious thought, and with an ardor of supplica- 
tion to God such as I have never felt before. My church was 
crowded as I have never known it before since I have been in 
Lowell. The city is charged to the brim with pity and fear 
for Sumner, and with indignation at the unholy outrage per- 
petrated upon freedom." 

This sermon, preached at Lowell, was followed by another, 
preached while spending his vacation among his old parishion- 
ers in Henniker, N. H., where he had arranged an exchange 
with their pastor, Rev. J. M. R. Eaton, for the month of Au- 
gust. That sermon was printed by request, under the title, 
" A North-side View of Slavery." 

Still later came the John Brown raid in Virginia. Concern- 
ing this Mr. Foster felt deeply. He regarded it not only a 
mistake, but a crime. But let him speak for himself. 

"November 16, 1859. 
" In regard to old ' Ossawatomie,' I foresaw that the Repub- 
lican party are likely to be divided in opinion. I oppose, and 
shall to the end, the extension of slavery. I condemn, and 
shall in plain, unequivocal language, and with an indignation 
in some degree proportioned to the wickedness of the deed, 
the outrages of the slaveholders in Kansas. I know that John 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 73 

Brown suffered unheard-of wrongs in the destruction of his 
children, his property, his individual rights. But two wrongs 
never make one right. I am not a man of blood. I do not 
lead a company of pirates, or an army of slaughterers, into 
Virginia because Captain Buford led a horde of plunderers and 
murderers into Kansas. I do not uphold John Brown in an 
attempt to run off slaves. But the proof is clear to my mind 
that he meant to do far more than this. He went in with 
arms, rifles, guns, and pikes, — enough for more than five hun- 
dred men. He seized upon an armory, the property of the 
United States. He took white men prisoners before any 
assault had been made upon himself. He took the lives of at 
least five white men. He had a Provincial Constitution all 
drawn up, with signatures, seal, and officers chosen under it, 
for the maintenance of a government in Virginia. Fred 
Douglass says expressly that their plan was to emancipate the 
slaves of Virginia and Maryland, and of course to maintain a 
rebel government in those States. The proof is perfectly con- 
clusive to my mind, that John Brown was guilty of treason, if 
not of murder. I am willing to admit that he was goaded by 
awful wrongs, but retaliation is not our law ; I am willing to 
admit that he was perfectly conscientious, but there is many a 
wild, misguided, perverted conscience, which does not in any 
degree diminish the crime. I cannot regard John Brown as a 
hero or martyr. We are brought, in my opinion, by this event 
to the most fearful crisis to which the nation has ever been 
brought. If the Republican party, as a party, or if any con- 
siderable portion of the honest men of the party, justify John 
Brown, the door is opened for the incursion of whites into the 
Slave States to incite slave rebellion. The Slave States will 
not endure that principle for an hour. Dissolution of the 
Union and civil war will come, with infallible and fatal cer- 
tainty, if the North adopt that platform. I have always main- 
tained that we had not the slightest right to interference, in 
the Slave States, by force and arms. Argument, love, and per- 
suasion are all the weapons that we, as individuals, can em- 
ploy. Congressional discussion and enactment, and peaceful 
legislation, are all the weapons we can employ as States. The 
doctrines of Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury & Co., which deny 
all government in the land, which go to uproot all our repub- 
lican institutions, of course encourage slave rebellion, and the 
conspiracy of whites to aid them. In their view, by logical 
necessity, John Brown is a hero and a martyr of the highest 
type. But I stand at a heaven-wide distance from their doc- 
trines, not only as to religion, but as to the government of the 



74 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

country. I am living under the same constitution with the 
Slave States. I have accej^ted that constitution. I regard it 
as the highest and most perfect Magna Charta of human rights 
ever accepted by any people under the sun. That constitu- 
tion does not allow me to incite slave rebellion. The moment 
I do it I am a traitor to the government of my country as 
much as Benedict Arnold was. When I reach that point, my 
first blows will be aimed, not at the throats of defenceless 
families at the South, men, women, and children, in their iso- 
lated and unprotected condition, but at the general and august 
Congress in their capitol assembled, at the legislatures of the 
several States in their halls of discussion. When I become a 
traitor I shall take the bold stand, and (with just cause) the 
honorable stand, of the Nullifier. I hold to the just right of 
revolution, if there be just cause. But when I head a revolu- 
tion, it will be one of constitutions, of general principles, of 
universal authorities and laws ; not an attack on Harper's 
Ferry, nor an assassination of unarmed Southerners. 

" I go into this matter with you, my beloved son, at a little 
more length than usual, because I believe the convulsion of the 
general mind has only begun. If the friends of freedom adopt 
false principles now, the mistake is fatal. One of two things 
will happen : either the Republican party will be utterly 
crushed under the odium of sustaining slave rebellion and 
southern assassination ; or the Slave States, within two years, 
will set up a republic by themselves, a slave empire, fenced 
around on all its frontiers, and upheld in all its fortresses by 
bristling bayonets, gleaming swords, and thundering cannon." 

But Mr. Foster's work was by no means confined to his 
public addresses. While not making pastoral calls to the ex- 
tent that some ministers think necessary, and never so much 
as to satisfy some in his parish, he yet did faithfully what he 
could. So long as his health permitted, he was always at the 
service of the afflicted, or the sick, or the thoughtful. His 
family letters make repeated mention of his calling here and 
there in his efforts to counsel or comfort. He was accustomed 
to hold a weekly inquiry meeting, and seldom during this 
period of his ministry did he fail to have some seek him for 
religious guidance. The following note will show his intense 
desire to do good, and his tender, wise way of putting his sug- 
gestions. It is addressed to a friend who had just presented 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 75 

him with a cane made of olive wood, from the Mount of 
Olives : — 

"My Dear Friend, — Please accept my thanks for your 
very acceptable present. It is indeed a precious 'memorial.' 
In my walks over the historic hills around us, it will often 
bring to my mind that sacred mount where our blessed Saviour 
suffered in the garden for the world's redemption. 

"Thrilled as we are by Christ's abode on earth, shall we not 
long, with humble and intense desire, for communion with Him 
in heaven ? That this will be your final privilege I have long 
had no doubt. Pardon me if I ask my honored friend, if he 
might not, by the public acknowledgment of his Lord, lead 
some to that blessed Saviour who are now halting between two 
opinions?" 

The friend to whom this note was written, then a prominent 
citizen well on in years, was led by such counsels to make a 
profession of religion, and subsequently became an ardent Sab- 
bath-school worker and a deacon. 

Mr. Foster loved and appreciated his people. His family 
letters are crowded with the warmest expressions of interest 
in his church and its individual members. He was at this time 
surrounded by strong men, who rejoiced in his strength, de- 
fended him from party aspersions, stimulated him to the 
noblest efforts by their appreciation, and by their public 
approval gave his efforts an influence through the city and 
northern New England, that these efforts, however excellent, 
could not have had alone. Edward Everett understood this 
element of strength when he was accustomed to gather the 
chief men of any community where he lectured on the plat- 
form around him ; our forefathers understood it when they 
placed the elders and deacons in prominent seats around the 
pulpit. In Mr. Foster's church were gentlemen of the highest 
standing in social, commercial, educational, and political circles, 
men known throughout the State. Their generous and enthu- 
siastic support of their beloved pastor was an untold source of 
encouragement to him. He recognized the value given to a 
preacher's words by the endorsement of a church of strong 
and well-known Christian men. As the years went by, one 



76 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

after another of these superior men was lost to him. Some 
died ; others removed from the city. Mr. Foster loved, trusted, 
and honored them all, and at every break in the circle of Chris- 
tian friends gathered around him in his church, his heart bled 
and his courage sank. These passages from letters — one to 
parishioners about leaving the city, another concerning some 
who had left — show the warmth of his feelings as a pastor and 
a friend. 

"My very dear Friends, — I cannot allow this letter, which 
sunders the tie of church fellowship between you and John- 
street Church, to go from my hand without one expression of 
our grateful remembrance of the past. In losing your pres- 
ence and counsel we are truly bereaved. I miss you from the 
(Sabbath services. It was the remark of a distinguished 
divine to his young clerical friend, — If you have only one 
highly-instructed and discriminating family in your congrega- 
tion, and can preach so as to secure the approbation of that 
one, you will have a high standard of attainment before you, 
and a powerfully animating motive to study. I have had 
other great and solemn inducements to give myself to earnest 
application, — I trust I have not been insensible to their force, 
— but I have needed this. It has been to me an inexpressible 
privilege for eight years past, that I could preach to such 
minds and hearts, and be upheld by such counsels and sympa- 
thies, as those of Mr. and Mrs. , and Mr. and Mrs. . 

It would be idle for me to deny that I deeply feel my bereave- 
ment. God bless you, and reward you for your generous 
friendship to myself and family, and invaluable labors for the 
upbuilding of this church. The wisdom of your counsels and 
the blessedness of your influence will not be forgotten by any 
of us. The Sabbath-school and the Bible-class miss you. The 
conference-room and the lecture-assembly miss you. The 
social circle, in all its gatherings for mutual acquaintance, in 
all its plans for benevolent action, miss you. We miss you 
in our sanctuary, and we miss you in our parlors. We try to 
be resigned, for we know that our loss is the gain of others, 
and that the great, universal cause of human welfare still has 
the full benefit of your Christian toils." 

" Mr. and Mrs. have shown to me great kindness. I 

knew their worth before, but the cordiality and generosity of 
their treatment of me, the inexhaustible fulness of their 
information, and the charms of their conversation, the perfect 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 77 



ease and impressiveness of their bearing, the warmth of their 
interest in every good object, the nobleness of their principles, 
made apparent in all discussions, have given to me new con- 
victions of the peculiar excellence of their character. Mr. 

is more like N. W. Dewey than any other man whom I ever 
met, — the same poetic, sensitive temperament, seizing with 
quick and true apprehension the beauties of books, the sublim- 
ities of nature, the loveliness of an intellectual, spiritual, and 
philanthropic life, the same constant flow of cheerful spirits 
and of genial humor, kindling up often into keenest wit ; the 
same ready and even extraordinary gifts of conversation and 
public speech; the same desire to make everybody happy that 

comes within his reach, and ability to do so. Mr. has 

seen somewhat more of the hypocrisies of men, of the sins of 
society, and of public wrongs, than Mr. Dewey, and therefore 
is more severely indignant against them. I have not culti- 
vated Mr. 's acquaintance as I desired to, perhaps as I 

ought to have done. I had not time. I intelligently surren- 
dered my social privileges and joys for the sake of hard study, 
and that I might reach a higher standard of sermonizing. I 
love my friends with a profound affection ; I delight in their 
society, with a heart-felt joy. When I have leisure, and when 
my nervous headaches do not disqualify me for thought, I have 
no greater joy than conversation with my ever-indulgent peo- 
ple, and with my highly valued friends. If I could have crept 

close up to Mr. 's heart, and, as a cherished, confidential 

friend, opened all the keys of his mind, I should have had a 
blessing such as I had in N. W. Dewey, and which, out of 
my own family and father's house, I fear the world has not 
for me again." 

During this first pastorate in Lowell, Mr. Foster received 
communications from churches in many other parts of the 
country, who were desirous of obtaining his services. These 
communications seldom went to the extent of a formal invita- 
tion. Mr. Foster was not a ministerial coquette. On no 
consideration would he encourage churches to give him a 
formal call, that the fact might be blazoned abroad and his 
reputation be enhanced. He the rather shrank from the 
least publicity in this direction, and was almost morbidly sen- 
sitive in regard to what he considered honorable dealings with 
Other churches which might be looking towards him as a pos- 



78 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

sible pastor. It was in this spirit that he wrote as follows to 
the Second Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, 1ST. Y., after a 
committee from that church had listened to his preaching, and 
he had received assurances that there was every probability 
that the people would extend him a call. 

"Lowell, Feb. 6, 1856. 

"Dear /Sir, — Your letter of the 4th inst., requesting me 
to preach in the Second Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, on 
the next Sabbath, was received last evening. Please convey 
to the session my grateful acknowledgments for this kind in- 
vitation. It will be impossible for me to comply with it on 
the next Sabbath. I have been sick during the week, and 
yesterday I was not able to sit up at all. Your invitation pre- 
sents to me a very solemn and difficult question for my decis- 
ion. I dare not dismiss it without prayerful consideration, 
and the advice of friends, some of whom are not in this city. 
Your letter causes me both surprise and grief, — surprise, that 
it should be thought possible by any that I should be able to 
stand in such a succession as that of Dr. Spencer ; grief, that 
I feel entirely disqualified for so responsible and eminent a 
position. For years I have regarded Dr. Spencer as the most 
distinguished clergyman our country has produced since Pay- 
son, for his direct, wise, and successful efforts for the salvation 
of souls. On whomsoever his mantle falls, he should be an 
Elisha indeed. 

" I know that my preaching for you one Sabbath does not 
make it certain at all that any abiding connection will be 
formed with your church ; but I dare not take this first step 
unless I feel prepared to go further, should Providence open 
the door. I am exceedingly averse to any effort on the part 
of a minister to get a call from a distinguished church for the 
promotion of selfish projects of popularity and emolument. 
The church and people with whom I dwell have treated me 
with great generosity and Christian fidelity. It would be 
very painful to me to separate from them ; it would be wrong 
for me to do anything to weaken their confidence." 

About the same time, he gave a similar response to a Pres- 
byterian church in Philadelphia. 

In March, 1857, there was extended to him a very urgent 
call from the First Church of Northampton, Mass. He felt 
quite inclined to go. He was pecuniarily hampered, and there 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 79 

were some special anxieties that made a change agreeable. 
But his people rallied about him with a cordiality and hearti- 
ness that surprised him ; they met his pecuniary needs ; they 
protested against his going with an earnestness that there 
was no withstanding, and he declined the call. Of this call, 
and his action regarding it, he wrote to a friend in Northamp- 
ton, before he had fully decided to give a negative answer, as 
follows : — 

"Lowell, March 24, 1857. 

" Dear and Honored Sir, — I have received your very kind 
letter, and I return to you my unfeigned thanks. God has 
been gracious to me, to give me such a degree of acceptance 
with your people. I desire to praise Him, and to make an 
unreserved offering of myself once more to His most blessed 
service in the ministry of the gospel. I will not attempt to 
enumerate the arguments which move me to accept your call. 
They are many and weighty, and it may be that the voice of 
God is calling with them. If this becomes clear to my mind, 
my course of action is settled. 

" Will you allow me to state, very briefly, the argument on 
the other side of the question ? My reasons for first permit- 
ting the thought of change to enter my mind were mainly 
four: 1, Country air for the health of my family; 2, The pay- 
ment of a debt occasioned by unforeseen sickness ; 3, The oppor- 
tunity to educate my children near home, — my son at Amherst 
College, and a daughter in the South Hadley Seminary; 4, 
Relief from too intense and protracted study. I have rewrit- 
ten for this pulpit almost every sermon I had preached before. 
I have written most of the time for six months past two new 
sermons a week. I love study, and hope never to lose the 
habits of a diligent student; but for some time past I have 
overtasked my brain, and my health has been in danger. 

" Shall I tell you what my people are now doing, and this 
without any prompting or solicitation of my own ? They are 
rallying around me with a love and generosity which surprises 
and overwhelms me. They offer me the use of a house in the 
open air of the suburbs, free of expense, my salary remaining 
the same as now. They say I may repeat my old sermons, one 
every Sabbath, and that only one new sermon a week shall be 
required of me. They tell me that the union of feeling with 
regard to my remaining here is complete and permanent ; that 
more than two hundred different individuals have attended my 
inquiry meetings, and a majority of them are hopeful converts ; 



80 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

that, if I leave them, I am scattering a great congregation, I 
am weakening an earnest church, I am wounding the hearts of 
devoted friends, I am staying the progress of an opening revi- 
val of religion. My dear sir, what shall I do? I did not 
anticipate anything of all this one month ago. I knew of no 
dissatisfaction among my people, and yet I supposed they 
would allow me quietly to go. My heart is torn with tumults. 
I know not where the path of duty lies. Bear with me, and 
allow me to ask for your prayers. My decision will soon be 
made." 

After this matter was definitely settled, and Mr. Foster was 
again fixed in his work among his people at Lowell, overtures 
came to him from Columbus, Ohio, which, under different 
circumstances, he would probably have considered favorably. 
Regarding this invitation to Columbus, and one to St. Johns- 
bury, in his previous ministry, he wrote thus, years afterward, 
to his father : — 

"West Springfield, Feb, 20, 1865. 

" I am sometimes overwhelmed with amazement when re- 
flecting upon God's plans for us all. How inscrutable are His 
counsels ! How surprising often the connection of causes and 
consequences, as we trace them in their unforeseen develop- 
ments ! After I had agreed to settle in Pelham, I received a 
letter from St. Johnsbury, Vt., inviting me there to preach. If 
the letter had come five days sooner, I should have accepted 
the invitation, and should never have known Lowell or West 
Springfield, should have had a history for myself and family 
very different from the present. In 1858, when I had been in 
Lowell six years, I received a letter from Columbus, O., invit- 
ing me, in behalf of the only Congregational church there, to 
settle with them. Yesterday, I preached in Agawam, and met 
there the gentleman (then and now resident in Columbus) who 
conducted the correspondence with me in behalf of the Colum- 
bus committee. He gave me an account of the history of the 
church, and the history of the movement which sent me the 
offer. Columbus, the capital of the State, midway between 
Cincinnati and Cleveland, lying in the Scioto valley, one of the 
richest agricultural regions of the whole commonwealth, is ad- 
vancing with almost unparalleled rapidity in population, enter- 
prise, wealth, intellectual power and influence. It gathers in 
the best young men from all quarters. Ten years ago it had 
twenty thousand population, now it has thirty-five thousand. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 81 

The Congregational church, then a new and feeble organiza- 
tion, was opposed by four strong Presbyterian societies ; now 
all is harmony and co-operation. They have a new and splen- 
did church edifice, crowded in all its seats ; they have a Sab- 
bath-school of seven hundred scholars ; they are drawing in 
very largely the young, and the intellectual, and the energetic, 
— the elements of progress and power. Their knowledge of 
me came in this wise : They had written to Rev. Dr. Storrs, 
of Cincinnati, and Rev. Dr. Bouton, of Concord, N. H., and 
Rev. Dr. Thompson, of New York, for a New England man. 
Every one of them sent my name. At that time, two of my 
parishioners, and another friend, then on a journey to the West 
with their families, stopped in Columbus. The gentleman who 
wrote*' to me had an interview with them. My parishioners 
were reticent as to the probability of my leaving Lowell. The 
other friend expressed the firm conviction that I would leave. 
They all spoke in friendly terms of my qualifications for Co- 
lumbus. I rehearse this history, not by way of complaint, but 
to show how God is leading us in unknown paths. If I had 
foreseen, nine years ago, what was before me, I should have 
accepted the Columbus offer. It would have changed the en- 
tire history of the life of some of the members of my family, 
if not all. ' Man proposes, but God disposes.' We need more 
faith, importunate prayer, humble waiting, holy obedience." 

Not long after these questions of removal were decided, 
there began to be a great work of grace among the John-street 
people. In 1857 and 1858, the latter that memorable year of 
revivals throughout the country, the John-street Church was 
wonderfully quickened and blessed. There had been other 
revivals before this, notably one in 1854, when good old Dr. 
Lyman Beecher, leaning on the top of his staff, came up from 
Boston and preached evening after evening, and assisted in 
the inquiry meetings. At this time Mr. Foster had the great 
joy of receiving his two eldest children into the church. But 
the revival of 1858 was even greater in its effects. Of it Mr. 
Foster wrote a full account, as a report at the annual church 
meeting. This report, given below, is taken from the church 
records. 

" God in His great mercy has blessed the church with a revi- 
val, apparently a continuation of the work of grace enjoyed 



82 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



during the previous year. Fifty were added to the church in 
1857, and the same number have joined our communion dur- 
ing the last year. The pastor has had conversation on the 
subject of personal religion with eighty anxious inquirers. 
About thirty, who give hopeful evidence of piety, have not yet 
united with the church. During most of the year, six prayer- 
meetings have been held each week, in addition to the three 
regular services of the Sabbath, the weekly lecture, and the 
weekly inquiry meeting. The Sabbath congregation has been 
large and marked by great thoughtfulness. The eager atten- 
tion and the starting tear have not infrequently given attes- 
tation to the presence of the Divine Spirit applying to the 
conscience the word of God. The revival has showed pre-em- 
inently the power of prayer. It has been to the Christian 
heart thrilling and encouraging in some of the prayer-meet- 
ings, to hear the voice of fifteen and sometimes twenty or more 
young converts following each other successively in earnest 
supplication for God's blessing upon themselves and others. 
Most interesting meetings have been occupied almost entirely 
by prayer from lips before unaccustomed to pray, when the 
spirit of fraternal affection, of solicitude for souls, and of a 
dependence upon Christ, has been remarkably manifested. The 
Sabbath-school, in its weekly lessons and in its monthly concerts, 
has awakened almost universal interest through the congrega- 
tion. Teachers have been faithful in personal conversation with 
their pupils. The Bible-class has been largely attended, and 
marked by earnest and profound discussion. We have occasion 
for earnest gratitude to God when we remember that all these 
months have been characterized by the quickened thought and 
deep emotion of Christians, as they have pleaded with one 
another to be faithful, and as they have wrestled with God for 
His blessing ; by the anxious inquiries of awakened souls, to 
whom impenitence and unbelief have assumed the aspect of 
deepest crime ; by the modest yet earnest and most impressive 
testimony of young converts, proclaiming the blessedness of 
their experiences and the sacredness of their purposes. We 
would render to God our thanksgivings, and take courage to 
press forward in Christian attainment and Christian action." 

In addition to the above, the following extract from a letter 
to his daughter Emily is not without interest : — 

" Friday night fourteen were examined, and yesterday they 
were propounded for admission to the church, — by letter, four; 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 83 

on profession, two ladies and seven young men. Miss came 

to see me Thursday evening, and related, with many tears, her 
distress. She is a young girl of some fifteen years of age, 
appears deeply in earnest, and intelligent in her religious 
hopes ; she is very desirous to unite with the church, but her 
parents utterly forbid. It is an unusual case, and a very hard 
one for the gentle, amiable young convert who is thus early to 
pass through one of the severest furnaces of affliction. The 
result upon her religious character may be calamitous, — it may 
be refining and improving. Twenty-two young men were at 
the prayer-meeting last evening. Eighteen of them led in 
prayer. Two of them spoke before a vestry full of people in 
the conference-room. One young man says ' he expects soon 
to be left alone in his life of irreligion.' He is evidently 
calmed down, though he does not acknowledge it, into thought- 
ful, surprised, anxious consideration. What hath God wrought ! 
Let us cease not, my daughter, to praise Him. Let us cease 
not to pray ! " 

Two children were born to Mr. Foster during this period 
of his life, — a son, Bela Edwards, named for Rev. Bela B. 
Edwards, a professor in Andover while Mr. Foster was a 
student there, and greatly admired by him ; and a daughter, 
Ellen Burroughs. The former died in the spring of 1857, 
to the great grief of his parents. A note to a friend thus 
announces the fact : — 

"March 16, 1857. 

" We have just been called, in the holy providence of God, 
to suffer again a great bereavement. We have laid a darling 
boy, named Bela Edwards, of three and a half years of age, 
in the grave. He was a pleasant child, an affectionate, sensi- 
tive, thoughtful young soul. As if angels prompted him, his 
heart turned even in his health to prayer, and more than once 
he was found on his knees supplicating a blessing, in his child- 
ish phrase, for every member of the family by name. A dozen 
times a day he would come to my study door, and rap, with 
the salutation, ' Papa, I have come to make you happy.' I 
hope we are resigned, but our home is lonely and desolate. 
I can think of little else. My heart swells and sinks at the 
recollection. The stormy billows go over my soul. It is the 
Lord, and I desire to kiss the rod, and hear its voice. But 
the affliction is one which sweeps me away sometimes with its 
tide of grief." 



84 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

There were now left to him in the latter part of this Lowell 
pastorate, but three children, — one son, Addison, pursuing his 
studies at academy and college ; and two daughters, — Emily, the 
elder, a part of the time away from home at school, and Ellen, 
the younger, still a little child about the house. Of these 
children he was exceedingly fond. There was no self-denial 
he was not ready to make for them ; at no moment were they 
out of his thought. To those away from home he wrote fre- 
quently, and at much length, the most thoughtful, affectionate, 
and helpful letters. Many a time, after coming home Sunday 
evening exhausted by the labors of the day, he would sit down 
and write to son or daughter a long letter ; because, as he would 
say, his heart was full for them, and the morrow would bring 
its duties which would prevent his writing. He determined 
that they should enjoy every facility for education, and after 
giving them all the advantages which the excellent schools of 
Lowell afforded, he sent them forth to higher institutions of 
learning, to follow them with his prayers and loving reminders 
of his care. It is impossible for youth to comprehend the 
intensity of parental love, and little, comparatively, did those 
children then understand the unselfish and overmastering 
devotion of their father to their best interests. They loved 
him well, and sought to show their gratitude by lives that 
should please him; but how little did they see of the high 
resolve and tireless affection that prompted his every word 
and act ! They have now some perception of all this, and as 
they drop a tear while they recall that noble life, they are com- 
forted in the thought that they can here record their gratitude. 

During the years that now began, and never ceased, of sepa- 
ration from his children, Mr. Foster was constantly manifest- 
ing the warmth of his heart in tenderest expressions of love. 
Some of his letters to his children, his wife, and his father 
may properly be introduced here, as showing what he was as 
a father, husband, and son, and as indicating that cheerful and 
sometimes humorous vein which was too often obscured by 
the drift of clouds of anxiety which would at times hang 
over him like a sea-fog, hiding everything pleasant in his 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 85 

life. The following was written just after his return from a 
vacation : — 

"Lowell, Southwest Study, Nice Old Spotted Table, 
Thursday, 4 o'clock, p. m., Aug. 26, 1858. 

"My Dear Wife and my Daughter Emily, — You see we 
are once more at home. The trees wave in the wind, as of 
yore ; the beautiful and brisk canal rolls as it did ; the sun- 
light glances through the leaves ; the green grass and the 
flowers send up their beauty and their odors to our senses. 
The distant roll of wheels and the busy hum of labor come 
to my ears, reminding me of my city locality, without en- 
croaching at all upon the pensive, steady, unbroken train of my 
thought. We have forsaken the green fields, the rolling river, 
and the silent wood, — now once more for work. Dear and 
holy and precious memories come back to me in my beloved 
home. God be praised for the guardian love and beneficent 
care that have led me on through various changes, through 
depressing scenes, and given me such a home. Praise to the 
Lord for the confidence, and love, and prayers of my people. 
Thanks to my Heavenly Father for the jewels of my home, 
for the beloved, blessed boys, once in our arms, now cherubs 
in Heaven, given to us in mercy, snatched from us in mystery, 
never, never to be forgotten, and never to cease through God's 
grace, the imparting of heavenly influences to aid us in duty 
and to draw us upward. May we be sanctified through their 
loss, and may we be prepared to meet them in the pure and 
happy world where they have gone. This is my daily prayer. 
Praised be God for the generous and beloved friends he has 
given us in our birthplace, and in every place of Christian 
labor where Providence has cast our lot. I know not that we 
have an enemy at Hanover, at Pembroke, at Henniker, at 
Pelham, or at Lowell. And last, not least, I desire to praise 
a God of love for this revival of religion, which still continues 
with undiminished interest." 

The extracts which immediately follow are from letters 
written to his daughter Emily while away at school. 

"West Newbury, Mass., Aug. 14, 1858. 
" My Beloved Daughter Emily, — I propose to commence a 
correspondence with you, which I trust will continue many, 
many happy years, and will be to you and to me a source of 
refreshment in our weary cares, and of strength and joy in 
our various duties. I do not expect to equal in my letters 



86 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



the wonderful ease, variety, and appropriateness of William 
Cowper, the poet and the model letter-writer. But I do expect 
that you will equal some of the famed lady letter-writers. To 
excel in letter-writing, it is necessary to possess readiness of 
mind, fertility of thought, command of language, combined 
with practice. You will have more leisure than I shall, and 
I doubt not that your side of the correspondence will surpass 
your father's. Shall I pursue this letter somewhat in sermon 
shape, and divide my discourse into heads, as follows : 1, Our 
amusements ; 2, Our work ; 3, Our diet ; 4, Our health ; 5, 
Our love." 

"I rejoice, my dear daughter, that you are in such a cheer- 
ful and hopeful mood. I know that your mental industry, 
your pleasant society, and the high themes which occupy your 
thoughts, are calculated to lift you up above despondency. An 
untenanted house goes to ruin faster than one that is lived in. 
A flute or a violin that rests unused in the closet will decay 
far more rapidly than one which discourses sweet melodies 
every day. So I believe that a body which is kept in tune by 
the thoughts of an earnest mind, and by the emotions of a 
noble soul, is more likely to be healthy and happy, than an 
idle, sluggish, pleasure-loving body. If you avoid exposures, 
and get comfortable sleep, I think your studies will exhilarate 
you and fill you with hope, and, by the reaction of mind upon 
health, will strengthen you physically. May God grant it, in 
His great mercy and kindness ! It gives me the deepest satis- 
faction, my dear child, to find your religious experience so true 
and intelligent. I am glad your teachers are such as to lead 
you constantly onward in the divine life. O, my daughter, 
how great is the privilege of loving and serving Christ ! Shall 
we not consecrate ourselves to him anew ? Shall we not re- 
soWe to spend and be spent for him, and thus find our highest 

joy?" 

"Lowell, June 22, 1859. 
" My Beloved Emily , — My address to the Theological So- 
ciety still drags its slow and lingering length along, but nev- 
ertheless I must part company with it for a little while, and 
talk with my dear daughter. My desire for usefulness is pretty 
strong. My longing for more intellect and more knowledge is 
a constant and urgent motive. My ambition for distinction is 
quite as influential as it should be, although I have surrendered 
a good many ambitions which I entertained when a young man. 
But I have not named the master-passion of my soul. What 
do you think it is ? Perhaps you have guessed it. Ah, it is 






BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 8? 



love, love for my darling children. One of them (do you know 
which it is ?) thinks she is not as good as the rest. Well, she 
is good enough for me. Do you think I want an angel around, 
when I am such an imperfect, inadequate creature? No, give 
me one for a daughter and a friend who is not too good for 
life's daily wants and toils, for 'loves, joys, kisses, smiles, and 
tears.' Give me one who is a woman, too, as well as a little 
bit of an angel, who sees her faults, and feels her failures, and 
longs for improvement, and does not shame poor me by her 
too exceeding excellence. Give me one for a daughter and a 
friend who can share my sorrows for shortcomings, and sym- 
pathize with me and help me. Give me one who loves her 
Saviour, and hates sin, and pants for spirituality and intellec- 
tuality ; one who is to be an instrument of salvation to souls, 
an honor to her sex, a blessing to the church and the world ; 
one who, through the Redeemer's grace, is yet to be an angel, 
bright and beautiful and strong. Give me such an one, and 
such an one is my Emily." 

" Sabbath Eve. 
" My jBeloved Emily, — I suppose it wrong to write secular 
letters on Sunday. But a father may write to his daughter, a 
minister may write to a member of his church, a Christian may 
write to a fellow-Christian on Sunday, provided the motive be 
a desire to promote the spiritual welfare of the correspondent, 
and the theme be one corresponding with the motive and wor- 
thy of the day. I have thought of you and prayed for you, 
my precious daughter, more than once or twice this day. I 
am greatly saddened to learn that you are sick. I suppose 
you have not been able to go out to meeting to-day. Have 
you had a joyful meeting with your Saviour in your room? 
Have you received a new pledge of His gracious pardon, and 
new evidences of intimate communion with. Him in His word? 
Your Saviour hears your prayers, and will surely answer you. 
He will not break the bruised reed, he will not quench the 
smoking flax. When your heart is desponding and seems like 
the reed bowed under the storm, when your faith is faint, and 
seems like the spark just ready to die, He will pour the balm 
of consolation and healing upon the bruises, He will kindle 
with the breath of His love the decaying flame, and give you 
beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of 
heaviness. Take heart of courage, my afflicted child, and trust 
in God your Father and your Redeemer. He loves you, and will 
love you to the end. Renew your hope, reconsecrate yourself to 
His service, and He will enable you to serve and glorify Him. 



memorial of rev. dr. e. b. foster. 



"My subjects of preaching to-day have been: — ' The Effect 
of Paul's Preaching before Felix,' and ' The Character of Abra- 
ham.' I spoke in the latter sermon of the influence of hard- 
ship and affliction upon Christian character. The noblest 
Christians are those who patiently endure ; the most useful 
Christians are those who gloi;ify God in suffering. Christ's 
most precious grace is granted in our distresses. I think, my 
dear Emily, that you are likely to learn experimentally some 
of these lessons. The trial of your faith is much more pre- 
cious than that of gold. It is my daily prayer that you may 
be saved from suffering, and restored to firm and permanent 
health. It is my constant prayer, that while lassitude and pain 
afflict you, you may have unfaltering hope and undecaying 
patience, a calm, sweet, holy, childlike trust in your suffering 
Saviour. May God keep you and bless you evermore, my 
Emily." 

"North Becket, July 19, 1860. 

"By all that is admonitory and the source of anxiety in my 
own health and the health of my very dear family, I wish to 
be instructed, made thoughtful, watchful, spiritual. I hoj)e that 
I am better prepared to die than I was ten years or five years 
ago. My meditations turn often to this theme. It is a ques- 
tion that has been shrouded through most of my lifetime with 
darkness and uncertainty. Am I prepared to die? It has 
caused me, at times, untold agony. I trust, with trembling 
and humility, that my spirit is changed more and more, and 
with some advances, into the image of Christ, and into that 
faith, spirituality, and purity which constitute a meetness for 
Heaven. I think I could lie down on my dying bed with more 
composure, and with more unfaltering confidence in the mercy 
of my Redeemer, than ever before in my life. I have been 
reading, during this intermission of my labors (it has been 
almost the only reading to which I have given any thought), 
the Memoirs of Henry Kirk White, of Bela B. Edwards, of 
Bennet Tyler, of three sisters (a fragrant bouquet of heavenly 
flowers growing on one stem), Lizzie, Abbie, and Fannie Dick- 
erman, of Mt. Carmel, Conn. I have been edified and bene- 
fited. No class of books refresh and quicken and exalt me 
more than these spiritual biographies. I never grow weary of 
going over the history of the useful and Beautiful lives and 
the death-bed testimonies of eminent saints who are now 
praising God above, and whose record and influence will live 
immortally below. My dearest daughter, let us strive to live 
so that death shall find us with our lamps trimmed, with our 
feet shod, with our robes of preparation and glory on." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 89 



A few other letters may be added. This written in vaca- 
tion to his wife : — 

"West Newbury, Aug. 18, 1858. 

"As we were on the water yesterday, we heard the cannon 
booming at intervals all day long, and we knew, before we 
reached home and saw the evening paper, that the Atlantic 
cable was sending its thrills of thought and international har- 
mony back and forth from shore to shore, thus binding, as we 
trust, twice thirty millions of Saxon souls together in eternal 
league. If I were at home I should write a discourse on this 
great event. 

" This loafing about, trying to kill time, seeking only to sniff 
the air, to exercise the muscles, and to consume food, is not 
favorable to the health of my soul. I feel as if I were going 
down rapidly into barbarism and Old Night. My face is 
already cooked by sun and air until it is as red as a lobster. I 
have lost my shivering sense of cold. I feel as if I were a 
woodchuck fatted on clover, just ready to go into a hole and 
hibernate for six months to come. This sort of life is a dis- 
tress to me. I feel very lonesome, and would that A. and I 
could be with the loved ones of the happy home." 

"September 1, 1858. 
" My Dear Wife, — I wish I could be with you on that beau- 
tiful hill above your father's house, and look off with you on 
that sublime, variegated, and wonderful landscape. I may or 
may not stand with you on that hill. But there are Delecta- 
ble Hills of Faith and Hope. Shall we not stand together 
there? There are hills of perennial verdure above, 'sweet 
fields beyond the swelling flood.' Shall we not join hand in 
hand, parents and children, and one and all stand on the bea- 
tific summits, and walk those heavenly fields, singing with 
accordant voices the praises of our Redeemer, God?" 

The following letters are to his son at college : — 

"Pittsfield, June 24, 1860. 
" My Beloved A., — I left home Friday morning, spent one 
night and day at North Becket, reached this place last night at 
nine o'clock, have preached twice to-day, with a good degree of 
comfort, and have addressed this evening a meeting-house full 
of children on the subject of temperance. I am tired, but I 
cannot forego the pleasure of a short epistolary talk with my 
dear son. I had a pleasant but somewhat tedious ride from 

7 



90 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



Lowell to Becket, for the express train took me to Springfield, 
and there I had to wait six hours. I had ample time to glance 
at the papers, read of the quarrels and intrigues of politicians, 
and meditate upon the multiplied slips which happen between 
the presidential cup and the political lip. Last night, about 
midnight, I was awakened by the 'thundering gun's explo- 
sion.' A cannon was fired a hundred times, — greatly to the 
discomfort and distress of sleeping inhabitants, — I suppose 
by the jubilant Douglasites. Well, the result of this quadran- 
gular presidential contest will be, whoever is elected, to give 
our republican institutions a more severe trial than they have 
ever undergone before. As I came, on Friday, to the sum- 
mit of the Berkshire hills, I was greatly struck with the 
exuberant beauty which God has scattered abroad over the 
world. The towns of Lancaster, Clinton, West Boylston, 
Worcester, West Brookfield, and Springfield are eminently 
attractive. Bedecked with yellow daisies and red blossoms of 
clover, smiling in the dew-drops, laughing in the sunshine, re- 
joicing in their gay mantle of green, they seemed fitted for 
habitations of innocence, like Eve's before she fell. I could not 
but think if the heart of man corresponded to the smiles of 
nature, in many of these gardens of New England, how happy 
would be the world we live in. As we crossed the majestic 
Connecticut, with its broad savannah of fertility, and then 
followed up the gentle Agawam through its quiet and rural 
nooks, I was impressed with the resemblance between that 
changing river, and the life of an ardent, aspiring, advancing 
young man. The Agawam, starting from the Becket hills, is 
for many miles a rapid and variable stream ; now shallow, then 
deep ; now meandering and slow, then straight and swift ; now 
dancing, with noise and battle, over the rocks, then still and 
smooth, as it slips on level ground, between flowery meadows, 
finally expanding, like a thoughtful, instructed, sanctified mind, 
with broader current, with deeper flow, with more still, un- 
noticed, yet resistless force, with an ever-extending shore of 
luxuriant meadows and glorious leaf-crowned hills. So may 
the life of my dear boy flow on, gay and cheerful in its happy 
morning, deeper, stiller, richer, more widely felt in its noonday 
abundance, sweeping in majestic strength and peerless beauty 
to the ocean of a happy eternity, where at last old age shall 
bring in its close. 

" By the way, have you read the ' Beauties ' of John Ruskin, 
a very remarkable writer on architecture, painting, and the 
works of nature? In my view, his best passages go much 
beyond De Quincey in his power to interest and instruct. I 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 91 



have read, this evening, his article on Mountains. Read it ; it 
is grand as mountains themselves, and the book is full of such 
passages. I have read to-day a large part of the life of Rev. 
Bennet Tyler, d. d., president, first of Dartmouth, then of East 
Windsor Seminary. He was a man of godly simplicity and 
faith, of clear, pellucid thought, of manly, logical reasoning, 
of noble affections as a man, of power as a preacher, eminently 
blessed in winning souls to Christ. Such a biography cheers 
me, strengthens me, quickens me. I feed upon it as upon bread. 
I thank my redeeming God for the guiding light and stimu- 
lating help of such beautiful examples. God bless you, my be- 
loved child ! I am anxious to know if you are well and happy. 
Most affectionately, your father." 

"Lowell, Friday, March 22, 1861. 

" My Dear A , — This Friday morning opens upon us 

cloudy, dark, cold, bleak, dreary. The biggest snow-storm of 
the whole winter has just closed. Roads and sidewalks are 
thoroughly blocked with drifts. Limbs of trees and flower- 
bushes in the yards are heavily loaded with damp snow. The 
whistling, moaning, roaring wind pours down from the north- 
east. The desolate weather — winter precipitated into the 
lap of spring — would not trouble me, for I experience a deep 
delight sitting in a warm and cosey room, in gazing at the 
lowery sky, in listening to the keen, clarion tune of the angry 
blast, in watching the outdoor turmoil. But I feel very lonely. 
My wife is at Hanover, A. is at college, E. is at school, and I 
am left comparatively alone. I know that some think I am 
more fond of books than company, that I am never lonely nor 
disquieted, provided only I can have a library, reviews, and 
newspapers. There may be some ground of truth in this 
notion, but after all it is very pleasant to be able to leave the 
grim silence of the library and the study, and, when the brain 
is in a whirl with the multiplication of thoughts, to find friends 
in the next apartment with whom the mind can relax from the 
intensity of argumentative study, and throw off the burden of 



This letter is to his little daughter : — 

" Williamstown, July 7, 1860. 

" My Darling Little Daughter, — I owe you a letter, and I 
am going to pay you. I will pay you by writing this letter to 
you. I will pay you with ten smacking kisses when I get 
home. I will pay you by buying you a new book and a little 



92 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



crockery dog. I will pay you by holding you in nay lap, and 
praying for you and taking care of you when you are well, by 
watching with you all night when you are sick ; by walking 
out with you on Dutton Street, and in the West Newbury 
fields. You will take care of your own dear papa when he is 
feeble, old, and blind, won't you? 

" I love you, my N. Words cannot tell how much I love 
you, and E., and A. A thousand bushel-baskets would not 
hold my love and my anxious thoughts for my children. 

"N., my dear little daughter, do you love the kind Saviour, 
who died to make you good and happy? He wants you 
to love him, for he says, 'Suffer the little children to come 
unto me.' Will you learn that precious little verse? The 
Saviour wants you to pray to him every morning and every 
night, and sometimes to go to papa's study, or mamma's bed- 
room, and kneel down there and pray. He can see you when 
the door is shut. He can hear you when everybody else is 
asleep. I have heard little birds sing this week in the moun- 
tain trees, gay and loud and long ; they were praising God. 
But Christ loves to have little children praise him, a great deal 
better than the birds. 

" Shall I tell you a story, for you are a little girl that loves 
stories ? Sometimes you make your papa tell stories when he 
is very sleepy in the morning. But he is not sorry to have his 
little daughter ask for stories. He has said in his heart a 
thousand times, ' I thank Thee, kind Father in heaven, for 
giving me this dear little daughter, to wake me up bright and 
early. I thank Thee for her inquisitive mind, that is always 
asking questions and teasing me for stories.' 

" Now for the story. I went out a week ago yesterday to 
fish on the pond. A big cloud came over the pond, and a 
great shower of rain came down. I had an umbrella, and 
did n't get very wet. It thundered loud, and I loved to hear 
it. I suppose the fishes thought they should get wet, so they 
swam out into the middle of the pond, and I couldn't catch 
them. A fisherman who was with me caught a big one, which 
would weigh two pounds, but in pulling it out, it caught in a 
tree-top that had fallen into the water, and he lost it. An 
Irishman had been fishing all day on the pond, and I bought 
twelve pickerel of him. He had a little dog, and all at once 
we heard the dog barking out in the grass. We went to see 
what he had found, and it was a big turtle with a shell on its 
back, sticking its nose and its paws out of one end of the 
shell, and its crooked, scaly tail out of the other end of the 
shell. The dog had found it on its nest. This was a hole in 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 93 



the ground about as large as a teacup. The turtle had laid 
seven white eggs in that nest. They were oval, and of equal 
size at both ends, about twice as large as a robin's egg, with a 
shell a little softer than a hen's egg. Poor turtle! I am 
afraid its nest got so much disturbed by a barking dog and a 
curious scholar that its eggs won't hatch out. 

" I have found several birds' nests, some of them with pretty 
eggs in them, and some of them with little downy birds. I 
have found squirrels, ever so many. They would say, ' Chip- 
a-chip, chip, chip,' and run away as fast as their swift little 
legs could carry them. I think their names must he Nimble- 
legs, Long-ears, and Bunny. Did you ever hear about those 
squirrels ? Last Monday, I found a partridge in the woods. 
I heard it stepping round on the leaves and making a cooing 
noise. Perhaps it had some little partridges hid under the 
bushes. I spoke out loud, and then it flew, with a buzz and a 
whir, as much as to say, ' Good-by, Mr. Stroller, I don't like 
to have you come into my house to visit, so I will go to an- 
other room.' 

"Good-by, my darling. Your very affectionate father." 

In the year 1859, Mr. Foster accepted an invitation to 
deliver an address at Dartmouth College before the Theo- 
logical Society. Although much worn from the protracted 
labors of the winter, he could not refuse any service which 
his beloved Alma Mater might require of him. The following 
extract gives an idea of the self-distrust and faithfulness with 
which he prepared himself for the occasion before him. 

"July 13, 1859. 

"My .Beloved Emily, — I am about exhausted. For four 
Sabbaths I have done all the work for my own pulpit and peo- 
ple, and in addition have devoted every hour I could obtain, 
whether by night or day, to the preparation of my Dartmouth 
address. I have written and rewritten, added and amended, 
shortened and still amended, launched out on new topics with- 
out amending, and still feel utterly dissatisfied with it and 
with myself. My subject, as the address is now written, takes 
this shape: 'A Living Theology the Orator's Power.' My 
heads of thought are as follows : A living theology gives 
power to the orator for the following reasons — 1. It produces 
a profound religious belief. 2. It inspires the soul with loyalty 
to truth. 3. It imparts simplicity of aim and style. 4. It 



94 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

awakens deep enthusiasm. 5. It secures freedom of thought 
and action. 6. It creates a clear sense of moral obligation. 7. 
It proposes, as the great aim of study, regeneration. 8. It 
leads the orator to deal in persuasion, not dogmatism or de- 
nunciation. 9. It causes the orator to expect progress in 
knowledge. 10. It leads to systematic, logical thought. 11. 
It fills the soul with the power of a genuine philanthropist. I 
have written on each of these topics from twenty to thirty 
manuscript pages (large letter size), equivalent in all to about 
eight ordinary sermons. I stand aghast at my own presump- 
tuous and" voluminous inability." 

The address came at a time when he was ill fitted for the 
task. Burdened with responsibilities, borne down by ill 
health, yet cheerfully accomplishing the regular pulpit and 
pastoral duties which devolved upon him, anxiously he carried 
out his promise. Concerning this address the Hon. James 
Barrett, of Butland, Vt., writes: — 

"At the commencement of 1859, Dr. Foster made the 
address before the Theological Society of Dartmouth College. 
It was worthy of the subject, the occasion, and the man. I 
mention this only as giving occasion for speaking of his sensi- 
tive and susceptible nature and temperament. He had been 
out of college twenty-four years, and had appeared as the 
speaker before all sorts of audiences, on a large variety of 
occasions, and was thoroughly accustomed to be greeted and 
held as the object of concentrated interest by 'the sea of up- 
turned faces.' He had become fully certified of success when- 
ever he appeared in response to a call on a special occasion. 
He had written and perfected his address by the use of ample 
time, and was familiar with it beyond any liability to embar- 
rassment in the delivery ; and yet, through the day before it 
was to be delivered, he was harassed with fearful foreboding 
as to his next day's performance, and was entirely sleepless 
through the night. This I know from what I observed and 
what he said to me on the occasion. I have understood that 
he was affected in this way throughout his public life. I knew 
in my intimacy with him, of his shrinking modesty, and of his 
nervous diffidence, — affecting him strongly even against his 
appreciation and judgment of himself." 

Other letters are here added, not with special reference to 
events in his life at this time, but to illustrate the variety and 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 95 

interest which always characterized his epistolary work. It 
will be noticed that many of these letters indicate that his 
health was becoming impaired by his constant and excessive 
toil. 

"Lowell, Jan. 17, 1859. 
" My Beloved A , — I write to-day with mingled sensa- 
tions of fatigue and relief, of sadness and of hope. I preached 
yesterday the first entirely new sermon I have been able to 
write for two months; and this was written under great 
depression. For four days of last week I labored to get the 
first imperfect sketch of my sermon, and when I went to bed 
Friday night, I had not a sentence of the regular manuscript. 
My outlined thoughts and scattered facts seemed to me frag- 
mentary and incoherent, and I was distressed with the fear 
that I should not be able to bring them into any completeness 
or order. I began to write early Saturday morning, and con- 
tinued to write without intermission until the small hours of 
the night before the Sabbath (nineteen hours, taking out one 
for meals), when my sermon was finished. The subject of the 
sermon was 'Woman's Mission.' It was one of my monthly 
series, and was an hour long. I think that Saturday's labor 
was the hardest day's work I ever accomplished. After such 
a pressure upon body and brain, I feel exhausted as well as 
relieved. Remembering my desperate and well-nigh futile 
efforts, for the last two months, to write, I feel greatly dis- 
tressed, — sorrowful that I should be thrown into such a state 
of imbecility ; fearful that these periods of depression and 
feebleness will return, and will kill me ; thankful that God has 
at last so far delivered me as to enable me to write one more 
sermon." 

"Pittsfield, Saturday, June 30, 1860. 
. . . "Twenty years ! It is a long stretch of time in one 
short life. I remember when I was ten years of age, ponder- 
ing, one bright summer's noon, in the mowing field, as I was 
spreading hay, well-nigh prostrate with fatigue, on the great 
and to me sometimes the dark problem of life. Should I sink 
under the burden of weary toil, or should I live to manhood ? 
Should I get an education and have strength for study, or 
should I be doomed to mental stagnation, and perhaps to an 
early death ? These were some of the questions on which I 
meditated at that early age, the farthest corner of the home 
lot, in a state of mind not very courageous nor sanguine. It 
does not seem a very long time since, with weeping eyes and 



96 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

weary frame, I stood leaning on the top of my spreading-staff. 
I remember my mournful cogitations when I was twenty-one 
years of age, and was a member of the Sophomore class, 
having lost one year in college. I remember my tremblings 
and my misgivings,' stronger than my hopes or my dreams, 
when at the age of twenty-eight, in the year 1841, I was or- 
dained a minister of the gospel. I remember the depression 
under which I left Henniker for Pelham, and the partial 
encouragement under which I left Pelham for Lowell. I feel 
stronger in Christian hope, stronger in intellectual vigor, 
stronger in love for my work, and in courage and power to 
labor for Christ, than I have ever felt before. I trust that I 
am more fit to live, if God should spare me to labor in his 
cause, than I was twenty years ago. I trust that I am more 
fit to die, if in His holy Providence He should take me 
away." 

"October 26, 1860. 

" The autumn leaves are falling. I have sat at my window 
for many days and watched them as the winds shook them 
down. Most of the trees in this beautiful Anne-street vista 
are now bare. A few evergreens stand untouched. A single 
soft maple at my west window, and four of the same species 
at my south window, wearing their delicate and inimitable 
orange hue, hold their frost-bitten leaves longer than other 
trees, and I never tire of looking at them. Nature, thou art 
an unmatched painter ! Thou mighty God, how glorious, how 
wonderful are all thy works ! The days we are now enjoying 
are mild and balmy as summer. The grains and the grasses 
and the fruits all garnered in, the autumn stores for winter 
comfort secured, — what a moving symbol is there here of a 
ripe old age, the old age of a devoted Christian; the toils of 
life accomplished, fruits for eternity gathered, with this joyful 
contrast, that there is no cold nor storm nor winter there, but 
for the child of God, His autumn lapses into an unbroken, 
everlasting spring. . . . 

"I suppose in your sequestered nook, where the grand old 
hills shut you in, where scholarship holds on its quiet flow, 
where your communion is with the ancients of the world, and 
with principles older than time and nobler than princes, you 
have hardly heard the turmoil and the stir. Happy seclusion ! 
Fortunate scholars ! May the Infinite Guardian hold Williams 
College and all its precious inmates in His protecting care ! 
Most affectionately, your father/' 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 97 



"November 19, 1860. 
"I rejoice with you that Lincoln is elected. I have no qual- 
ification to throw around this joy. ''Tis a consummation 
devoutly to be wished.' It is a vindication of justice. It is a 
checkmate upon the extension of slavery. It is a new era in 
the history of the country. But it will be resented and resisted 
by the South. I fear the Southern Confederacy and the exas- 
peration of passions and the strife of warring sections. It is 
not a time for Wide-awakes to brandish their torches, and lift 
their jubilant shouts. It is not a time for threats, nor scoffs, 
nor provoking words, nor cool calculations of war. We* love 
our brethren. There is no hatred of the North against the 
South. I can forgive Wise, and Yancey, and Toombs, and Rhett, 
and Gist, and Magrath, and Cobb, far more easily than north- 
ern marplots. It is the time for wisdom, self-control, prayer, 
and conciliation. Yes, conciliation, while we adhere unfalter- 
ingly to the great principle of non-extension of slavery." 

"Lowell, Jan. 11, 1861. 

" My Dearest A , — I have been somewhat negligent not 

to write to you the first of the week, but the simple truth is, 
my whole soul is filled with alarm and distress on account of 
the portents of civil war, and it makes me sick. It takes away 
my strength for study and for writing. It interrupts my sleep 
and my digestion. It makes me nervous, anxious, bewildered. 
If possible, I shall have to turn my thoughts more to some other 
subject. You have observed, since the opening of the year, more 
men of thoughtful and scholarly minds have died than in any 
other fortnight since your remembrance or mine, — Hon. Judge 
Kent, of New York City, Rev. Dr. Anthon, of New York City, 
Rev. Dr. Hackley, of Columbia College, Rev. Dr. Haddock, 
late of Dartmouth College, Rev. Dr. Smith, of New Hampton 
Seminary, and Rev. Mr. Woodbury, of Milford. It is greatly 
alarming. And if the present condition of our country con- 
tinues, or if it changes to actual war, and puts on garments 
rolled in blood, the mortality among men of active nature will 
be twofold more, in all probability, than it has ever been be- 
fore. I suppose you have read Mr. Seward's speech. If so, 
you will admit that there is one man of political foresight, of 
comprehensive and powerful mind, of republican integrity, 
who has drawn a picture of the horrors of disunion and fratri- 
cidal strife, beyond any genius of painting which I have ever 
been able to employ in conversation with you. May God in 
His mercy deliver our unhappy nation from the gulf of barbar- 
ism and bloodshed into which we are plunging ! " 



98 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

A letter follows which makes reference to the terrible ac- 
cident at the Pemberton Mills, in Lawrence, Mass., where a 
building suddenly fell to the ground, and scores of operatives 
were crushed beneath the ruins, or burned to death under the 
naming timbers. 

" The calamity at Lawrence is the most dreadful tragedy of 
the kind that has ever happened in our country. The burning 
of the theatre, many years ago, at Richmond, Va., the confla- 
gration of the steamer Henry Clay on the Hudson River, the 
railroad catastrophe at Norwalk, when so many physicians 
were killed, the shipwreck of the Arctic, are the only events 
which approach it in loss of life and injury to limbs; but even 
they were less terrible. Some very affecting cases of fortitude 
and self-forgetful devotion occurred, enough to make us think 
more favorably of heroism and love of the human soul, espe- 
cially when we read 'the humble annals of the poor.' The 
divisions of my sermon Sabbath morning, from Prov. 27 : 1, 
were these — 1. Beware of a presumptuous mind. 2. Trust in 
an overruling Providence. 3. God never deviates from His 
established laws. 4. Unforeseen and instantaneous death is 
not necessarily a calamity. (It was not to Thomas Chalmers, 
nor to Arnold of Rugby school, nor to the regenerate ones 
who perished at Lawrence.) 5. Our only preparation for the 
swift assault of death is an immediate surrender to Christ. 6. 
The people of God are always safe. 7. God, by reiterated 
strokes, the death of great men during the last year, the John 
Brown tragedy and its results, and otherc alamities, is impress- 
ing upon the people of the land a sense of His displeasure 
and their imperative duty." 

But as time drew on, Mr. Foster's health grew more infirm. 
It became plain to him that he must have rest, if not by abso- 
lute cessation from work, at least by a change in his field of 
labor. His brain was wearied, and he found it difficult to con- 
centrate his thought on the matter in hand. His condition 
at this time is best indicated in a letter which he wrote to a 
friend concerning his disabilities. 

" September 6, 1860. 
" You seem to suppose that my troubles arise from an un- 
necessary 'self-depreciation.' Now it may be that some of my 
sermons, which are actually written, I underestimate. They 






BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 99 



never satisfy me ; they appear to me almost always flat, stale, 
and unprofitable. I say this sincerely, and without fishing for 
a compliment. From the fact that I aim perpetually at a high 
standard, and that when I have finished a sermon I compare 
it with a high standard like the discourses of Dr. Hopkins, 
Dr. Wayland, Dr. Alexander, and Dr. Tyng, it may be that I 
am unduly aspiring, and, when I fail of reaching my high 
ideal, I am unduly distressed. I have sometimes thought that 
this was my fault and my misfortune. But whether this be 
characteristic of me or not, it is not the sorrow over which I 
now mourn. My present disability is of a different kind. It 
is an utter incapacity, during long and weary days, to do any- 
thing, that is, to produce any original composition of logical 
structure and of serious length. I can read a book of theology, 
or history, or poetry, and enjoy it. I think I could learn a 
lesson in Greek, or Latin, or mathematics. My memory works 
with a degree of activity. My faculty of understanding what 
others have written is present with me. My relish for study, 
for these branches of study, is no less than ever. But I have 
lost, in a measure, my faculty of original thought. I select a 
subject and attempt to develop it ; my thoughts are chaos. I 
search for ideas, I call for them, I long for them, I painfully 
labor for them, I pray for them. I might as well ' evoke spirits 
from the vasty deep'; they do not come. Here is my sorrow 
and my despair. 

" I know of no reason for my present incapacity except ill- 
health and over-work. For the last seven years I have doubt- 
less kept the tension of my intellect, in sermon-writing, too 
protracted and too severe. I have pushed the pen through the 
day and deep into the night for successive days, week after 
week and month after month, with but small intermissions for 
food, or society, or recreation, or rest. Perhaps I am paying 
the penalty. I undertook to heal my malady by a several 
weeks' exchange with my brother, thus lengthening out my 
vacation to three months. During the first six weeks I thought 
I experienced improvement ; during the last six weeks I did 
not. I am now no better than I was at the opening of sum- 
mer. The autumn and winter, with their increased burden of 
study and toil, are upon me, and I am unprepared for them. 
I have less pain than I had a month ago. Still, at the close of 
every day of hard study, especially at the close of every Sab- 
bath, I experience a pain in the side and a languor of the sys- 
tem (the result, I believe, of a disordered liver) which I did 
not formerly feel, and which are ominous of worse if not fatal 
derangement. But enough of this gloomy theme." 



100 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

In connection with these difficulties was a partial paralysis 
of the wrist, caused by the incessant use of a steel pen. Of 
this he wrote in May, 1861: "Please excuse the illegible pen 
manship of this letter. My wrist is stiff and lame and full of 
pain. I am afraid my whole right arm will yet be paralyzed." 

In June, 1861, he took a decisive step, and resigned his pas- 
torate. Of this action he wrote as follows to his son : — 

"Lowell, June 11, 1861. 

"My Beloved A- , — Once more I am adrift, — no longer 

pastor of John-street Church, but thrown upon the tide of 
unknown events, to be guided, I trust, by the hand of Provi- 
dence to some safe and sheltering harbor. Last Sabbath, 
at the close of the afternoon service, I read to the congrega- 
tion a resignation of my pastoral office, to take effect with the 
close of July. The paper is in the hands of the church and 
society. What action it will elicit I know not. A council will 
soon be called to give advice, and by authority to them com- 
mitted, to dissolve my connection with this people, if they 
think it best. All the members of the church and congrega- 
tion express profound regret at my decision. It is like tearing 
the heart-strings to cut myself loose from them. I love them 
with a deep affection. I am grateful to them for words of 
sympathy, and deeds of generosity, and Christian co-operation. 
If I was in the full vigor of athletic strength, and had the 
power to accomplish all the labors demanded for this great city 
congregation, no motive could draw me away from them unless 
signs of indifference on their part should appear, such as I have 
not seen. But my overtasked brain needs rest, and my debili- 
tated frame needs exercise, and air, and regimen, such as I 
cannot secure in the necessary and constant pressure of my 
toils here. My heart is moved with strong desire for this dear 
people. My remembrance of • them shall never fade. May 
God fold them beneath His sheltering wing! May He rain 
upon them the showers of His grace, and guide them by His 
counsel, and give them prosperity, and bring them at last to 
His glory ! " 

A council to consider his resignation met early in July, and 
adjourned to a later date. A letter tells the story. 

" The council met last Tuesday, and adjourned without dis- 
missing me. Mr. B. and others importuned for an adjourn- 
ment, thinking the parish might be canvassed, an expression 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 101 

made which would relieve me of all anxiety about old sermons, 
a sum raised which would meet all expenses of absence and 
of family support for a year, so as to give me a long rest, and 
bring me back with renovated health and restored courage, 
and the prospect of laboring here for many future years. I 
see no prospect of accomplishing any such result. The ad- 
journed meeting of the council is next Tuesday afternoon. I 
had a letter last night from West Springfield. They expect 
me to preach for them three Sabbaths, beginning August 4. 
Providence permitting, I shall go there, and shall hope to find 
a field where sources of solicitude will disappear, where springs 
of health may be found, where opportunities of usefulness may 
open. God only knows what is before me and my family." 

At the second meeting of the council, July 23, 1861, Mr. 
Foster was dismissed. The tie which had bound him to a lov- 
ing, faithful people for eight years and three months, was sun- 
dered, greatly to their mutual regret. The following letters 
show with what feelings he left, and how he sought to comfort 
one of his sorrowing flock in the separation : — 

"August 1, 1861. 

"My Dearest A , — I have nearly completed my prepara- 
tions for leaving Lowell. One of the last things which I do in 
this dear room, which I quit now probably forever, and in this 
dear city where I have spent the most prosperous and happy 
portion of my life, is to pen a few words to you. My partings 
with the beloved friends and scenes, now left behind, are with 
infinite pain. If I had foreseen the extent of my distress, I 
should not have ventured upon the removal. I am lonely and 
desolate. I believe I have no bravery of soul. My roots are 
pulled up; it seems to me doubtful whether they are ever 
planted again. My lot, thus far in the ministry, has been 
somewhat peculiar. I have been tossed on ever-restless waves. 
In three different towns, in nine different houses, have I re- 
sided with my family, and now another upturn and overturn, 
the most mournful of them all. 

"I preached at Pawtucket Falls, Sabbath day, with some 
degree of freedom, and'a large impression of sadness. Some 
twenty or twenty-five of the John-street people were there. 
As it was probably my last Sabbath in this region, and my last 
address to any of this dear congregation, I felt well-nigh over- 
whelmed. May God keep me, for I feel at times as if both my 
head and my heart would break ! " 



102 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



" My Dear Friend and Brother, — Ministers are but instru- 
ments, some of them feeble ones. Your Saviour lives and 
reigns. He walks in the midst of the golden candlesticks. 
Shall not the John-street Church and Society lean upon Him? 
I believe He has a great blessing in store for you. It may come 
in an unexpected form, but it will come. Those minds of active 
force and large information, those hearts of warm sympathy 
and fervent prayer, those hands that have been so earnestly 
and so long employed for the cause of Christ, cannot combine 
their energies and consecrate them anew to God without im- 
portant results." 



VII. — Pastorate in West Springfield, Mass. 

1861 — 1866. 

Mention has already been made of the fact that, before Mr. 
Foster was dismissed from Lowell, he received an invitation 
to preach at West Springfield, Mass., with reference to settle- 
ment. He afterwards received similar invitations from West 
Meriden, Conn., West Bloomfield, N. J. (now Montclair), 
and some other places. But having already agreed to preach 
at West Springfield, he declined going elsewhere. He rigidly 
held himself in honor bound to settle the question of an 
engagement in West Springfield before looking in any other 
direction. He was at this time inclined to a country pastorate. 
A friend had strongly urged him not to think of settling with 
any other than an important city church, but he replied as 
follows : — 

"You intimate a desire that I should seek a city pastorate. 
The advantages would be many, but the objections, to my 
mind, are conclusive. I doubt my intellectual ability, but we 
will not discuss that. Tarn not adapted in the temperament 
of my soul to such a place. The conflict of opinions and wills, 
the outdoor excitement, the platform rush, the mingling with 
crowds, the competition of churches and ministers, the demand 
for impromptu speech, the necessity of putting on a brazen 
face and an iron armor over the heart, all make it a place 
unsuited to my nature and my habits. The men are few who 
can make a permanent stay in a city. Dr. Spring, of Xew 
York, a great author; Dr. Tyng, a great extemporaneous 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 103 



speaker ; Henry Ward Beecher, a preacher of wonderful power ; 
Dr. Adams, of Boston, a man of marvelous pathos of thought, 
poetry of style, and versatility of talent, — are nearly all the 
examples I can think of; and they, by remarkable good for- 
tune, must be established in strong and rich churches which 
no mutation can shake. I think I understand my constitution, 
my ability, and my needs. No, the city is not the place for 
me. Give me a quiet, harmonious, strong, forbearing church, 
near to great centres and quickening influences, like that of 
West Springfield, and God has blessed me up to the height 
of my aspirations." 

With that entire absence of self-seeking which always char- 
acterized him, he afterwards wrote : — 

" If the Lord will give me another home, with a comfortable 
support for my family, and with the prospect of permanency, 
I will covenant, I trust not rashly nor self-confidently, but in 
the strength of God, to labor on diligently till I die. Not 
rusting out, but wearing out, I will fall, prematurely, if it 
must needs be, but fall in the tracks where I am planted. 
Pray for me, for I sadly need the prayers of all who love me." 

In August, 1861, while he was preaching at West Spring- 
field as a candidate, Mr. Foster received from Williams 
College the honorary title of Doctor of Divinity. It was a 
recognition that touched him deeply, and coming just at the 
time it did, it comforted and encouraged him greatly. Con- 
cerning it he wrote to his son as follows : — 

" I notice in the morning paper one other item of news of 
special interest to you and to me. I value the honorary title 
of D. D., coming from Williams College, as of peculiar worth. 
From Williams have gone forth more than five hundred min- 
isters, many of them eminent for scholarship and genius, nearly 
all of them endowed with sanctity and grace. Its halls and 
its groves have been made sacred by such as S. J. Mills and 
Gordon Hall. Its president, for the peculiar traits which fit 
him for the place, is the first man of New England. Its board 
of instructors win the confidence and the hearts of all the 
pupils. Its board of trust are wise, able, devout, faithful men. 
I deem it a privilege beyond the imprimatur of most colleges, 
to receive their theological honors. The title lays upon me 
new responsibilities and obligations. It shall be my purpose 



104 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

prayerfully and studiously to gird myself for the duties devolv- 
ing. God grant that I may have wisdom and ability according 
to my desire. I shall feel encouraged to press on in the labors 
of the ministry. Hearty thanks once more, let me say, for the 
approval of the trustees of Williams College, and for the mag- 
nanimous friendship of those men with whom I have so often 
communed in the sanctuary and the social circle, and to whom 
I owe so much." 

Dr. Foster, according to agreement, preached in West Spring- 
held, Mass., received a call, and was installed pastor there, Oct. 
10, 1861. Of the place and the people, his own words give a 
graphic and admirable description. 

" Chicopee Falls, Mass., Aug. 5, 1861. 

"My Dear Wife, — I have spent one Sabbath at West Spring- 
field. The church is one of the old-fashioned structures, built 
fifty years ago, originally with square pews, high pulpit, and 
gallery stretching on three sides. It is modernized with lower 
pulpit, slips, and organ. It will seat seven or eight hundred 
persons. Between three and four hundred were present yes- 
terday. The church membership is two hundred ; the Sabbath- 
school about the same. The township is four miles wide and 
six miles long, more than one third of it consisting of river 
intervale, of richest soil and highest cultivation. The farms 
are exceedingly productive, and the owners of thefm are able 
to live in comfort and even in luxury, and that without as 
much hard work as some are compelled to perform. The chief 
crops are corn and tobacco, — corn for the supply of food, and 
tobacco for the accumulation of money. The appearance of 
the congregation is that of a staid, thoughtful, earnest, tem- 
perate, independent people Their prayers, at the evening 
meeting, indicated that they had been trained by theological 
thinkers to a close, coherent, scriptural style of meditation, to 
appropriate, fervent, lucid, large-hearted supplications. There 
w r as no bungling in their style of expression ; there was no 
leanness in their spiritual ideas ; there was no lack of unction 
in the intensity of their petitions. Evidently it will require a 
devout, sincere, scholarly, strong-minded preacher to satisfy 
them. Such they have had in the past, and they are not likely 
to lower their standard. 

" The town is composed almost entirely of one opinion. Po- 
litically, it is strongly Eepublican. Religiously, it is almost 
wholly Congregational ; no Baptists, no Methodists, no Uni- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 105 



versalists, no Unitarians, no Atheists. The young people are 
staying at home far more than they did fifteen years ago. 
Fathers, with large families, are cutting their big farms into 
sections, and building a house for each of the sons, as he 
branches off with his own wife and children. There is hardly 
a houste within the bounds of the parish, which has not some 
one individual, or more, who is a member of the church, and 
perhaps not a single house which is closed by prejudice or by 
unbelief against the visits and religious influence of the pastor. 
For a faithful servant of God, it is a field of rich promise, not 
in the brilliant show of the immediate hour, but enduring re- 
sults of knowledge and piety, and in the eternal harvest." 

The old West Springfield church was famous for its pastors, 
nearly all of them men of marked ability and of much note. 
He thus refers to them : — 

"It is a delicate and difficult matter to follow such men as 
Rev. Dr. Hopkins, the venerable and the godly ; as Rev. Dr. 
Lathrop, the learned divine, the wise counsellor, the witty and 
talented conversationalist; as Rev. Dr. Sprague, the facile 
writer, the eloquent preacher, the voluminous biographer; as 
Rev. Dr. Vermilye, the man of extemporaneous genius, busi- 
ness talent, and eminent knowledge of human nature; as Rev. 
Dr. Wood, of affable manners, of great efficiency in dealing 
with the young, of devoted piety; as Rev. Mr. Field,* literary, 
versatile, widely associated with learned men ; as Rev. Mr. 
Hawks,* one of the first biblical scholars of New England. 
It is a task of infinite difficulty for me to stand in such a place, 
with such memories thronging upon me, and not feel that I am 
an insignificant creature, unworthy to tie the latchet of their 
shoes." 

Dr. Foster and his family were received in West Springfield 
with old-fashioned hospitality by his new people. In a letter 
to his son he gives this glimpse of "sunny-side" life in the 
ministry : — 

" The people have brought a cord of wood, a barrel of flour, 
pork, butter, cheese, eggs, potatoes, squashes, turnips, cabbages, 
beets, onions, sugar, tea, coffee, etc. etc., so that when we arrive 
we shall find all preparations for housekeeping and all sources 

* Since then both these gentlemen have received the degree of D. D. 



106 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

of comfort at hand. The people went with their teams and 
carried all our goods from Springfield depot to West Spring- 
field on Thursday of last week." 

A letter to his eldest daughter speaks of their happy 
entrance into their new home : — 

" West Springfield, Oct. 3, 1861. 
"My Beloved Emily, — Hail to you from Leafy Parsonage, 
henceforth our home ! I write to you from the southeast cham- 
ber, sunshiny, warm, and beautiful. It looks out upon a pleasant 
prospect of garden and field, — no objects to distract attention, 
no noise to deafen the ear, no sight of deformity, no sound of 
sin, no sources of danger to oppress the mind. The soul is its 
own kingdom. My joys are within. My company is with books. 
My communion is with God and nature. My sphere of action 
and my social fellowship are with a calm, quiet, trusting people, 
who look little at show and much at substance, who are not 
whirled about in the turmoil of change, who are steadfast in 
their choice of pleasures and their pursuit of duties. Yester- 
day, after breakfast and dinner at Col. P.'s, we came to our 
home of beauty, built our fires, took possession (I trust with 
grateful hearts), and, after a night's rest, we commence the 
duties of this Thursday morning in the light of this bright and 
balmy October day, with hopes of cheerfulness somewhat akin 
to the calm joy of the external world." 

When once comfortably settled in the beautiful parsonage, 
there came over Mr. Foster a great content. His health im- 
proved. His charming country home was greatly to his mind. 
His people were full of love and kindness. The clouds rolled 
away, and he worked more happily and easily than for years 
before. His whole pastorate here was for him an unusually 
happy one. This appears both from a letter written at this 
time to his son, and another to his father, written four years 
later. 

" West Springfield, Oct. 4, 1861. 

" My Beloved A , — We are planted in our new and coun- 
try home, on the borders of the pleasantest and most beautiful 
city of Massachusetts, a rural retirement not second in its attrac- 
tions of comfort and loveliness to any other town ; among a 
people tranquil, uniform, confiding, thoughtful, spiritual; in a 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 107 



parsonage the most comfortable we have ever occupied; with 
a salary which, I trust, will keep our heads above the dark 
waves of debt, with a prospect of throwing off from my mind 
some of the terrible anxieties of the last year, and in this 
delightful scenery and free, pure air, of recruiting my shattered 
health. I once more pitch my tent and hope by God's blessing 
to accomplish something, for a little space longer, for the wel- 
fare of my family and for the cause of my Saviour. For two 
mornings the sun has risen in an unclouded sky over our heads, 
and from its first lift above the horizon to its meridian, it pours 
its full and cheering beams into our south windows. Thank 
God for the sunshine ! I have felt the lack of it for a few years, 
and mean now to enjoy a full supply of it. It costs nothing, 
and is worth an infinite sum. Thank God for the breathings 
of these bright, embellished fields, — they are sweet, balmy, 
rich, healthful to the body, invigorating to the soul. Let me 
praise the Lord for these majestic trees, crowded with foliage, 
crowned with grandeur, the home of birds and katydids, the 
beautiful shade of happy children in their plays and of seques- 
tered lovers in their rambles ; for these spires of grass which 
suffer from no parching drought nor exhausting barrenness ; 
for these pyramidal evergreens, keeping their glory through 
winter as well as summer, through storm as well as sunshine; 
for these beds of snow-drops and blossoming flowers, the fringe 
of adornment on all the garments of fertility. Let me praise 
the Lord, for he has made a beautiful world, and given me, at 
last, a beautiful spot in it. Henniker had many attractions, 
but it was not so symmetrical, nor leafy, nor exuberant, nor easy 
of traverse, as this dear valley. Its hills were rocky and steep 
and rugged. Its fields were some of them marshy, and some 
of them sterile, and none of them beautiful like these. Its 
people were good and dear, and some of them the worthiest 
and dearest of earth; but I hope to find Christians in this 
church, and friends in this grand old town, as noble and gen- 
erous, as strong in their love to me and mine, and planted as 
deep in my affections as any of my early parishioners. Pelham 
was like Henniker, only not so attractive in scenery. Its plains 
were more of the dead sand, its hills were more cold and un- 
drained. I would not speak disparagingly of the hills and val- 
leys of New Hampshire, for I have loved to live among them 
and to wander over them; but they are not like this alluvial 
Connecticut river savannah. Of Lowell I can speak only with 
grateful remembrances and strong affections. It will take 
many a long day and many a lingering, longing, backward 
look before our hearts will be weaned from Lowell. There are 



108 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



friends and Christian co-workers whom we found in Henniker, 
Pelham, and Lowell, from whom our gratitude will never wan- 
der, from whom our love will never be weaned. But Lowell 
is an endless succession of bricks, and I think an eternity of 
bricks is less desirable than an eternity of leaves. Lowell is a 
ceaseless babel of noise, and I think that an immensity of bird- 
songs is better than an immensity of bell-ringing and wheel- 
racket. I love the country. God made it, and man made the 
town. I love the quiet. My communion is with the great 
souls of the past, whose thoughts are embalmed in books, and, 
as I trust, with the high spirits of Heaven, with whom my 
fellowship and my joy are to be forever. I love stability and 
uniformity. The rapid and transient excitements of the 
city, the whirlwinds of change, confuse my brain and make 
me afraid." 

To his father he writes : — 

" If God spares your life, as we hope and pray, I doubt not 
you have much happiness yet in store. I think a serene, pa- 
tient, thoughtful, trusting, religious old age is eminently desir- 
able. I know of nothing more beautiful, not even childhood 
itself. God often seems to bestow, in old age, when cares are 
banished, and burdens are lifted, and sins are conquered, and 
fears are dispersed, the very sweetest joys of life. If I may 
judge from my own experience in advancing years, old age is 
fitted to be happy. I have a more anxious and sorrowful tem- 
perament than most, but I enjoy life, in some respects, more 
than I ever did before. I enjoy my garden, and the care of it, 
as I never did at the age of twenty-five or thirty-five. I enjoy 
the scenery that I behold around me in rides and journeys, — 
the beauty of the earth and sky, the richness of the hill-side, 
the meadow and the forest, the river and the lake and the 
mountain summit, more than I did in my younger years. I 
enjoy books and the conversation of thoughtful minds as much 
as ever. I enjoy my ministerial work (when I have health to 
feel that I can accomplish it) with a pure and deep satisfaction. 
Let us praise God for his mercies. Let us improve them for 
His glory. Let us urge our onward way to heaven, there to 
praise and love and serve Him forever." 



He immediately took up his work with great heartiness, as 
these extracts of different dates will show : — 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 109 

"November 4, 1861. 

"I am very tired on this Monday, the minister's weary day. 
I visited last week fifteen families, received some twenty calls, 
took the installing prayer at an ordination, attended the meet- 
ing of a church committee, — an occasion of large anxiety, as 
matters of church discipline came up for discussion, — con- 
ducted a funeral, spoke twenty-five minutes at the Thursday 
evening lecture and thirty-five minutes at the preparatory lec- 
ture of Friday, conducted extemporaneously the entire com- 
munion service yesterday, the first time that I ever did so, and 
spoke again twenty minutes last evening at a monthly concert. 
I have a funeral to-morrow, and visitations promised two days, 
and perhaps three, of the week, and a round of visits to be 
received. I am not idle, and do not expect to be, while life or 
breath or being lasts, or immortality endures." 

"April 7, 1862. 

"My Dear A , — Pardon my silence of last week. I 

have been driven for the last fortnight at high-pressure speed. 
My Fast-day sermon was one hour and a half long, every word 
of it newly written. I had three funerals and three school 
visitations during the fortnight. I have delivered my dis- 
course on ' Self Culture ' twice during the same time, — once at 
Chicopee, before an audience of seven hundred, on Sabbath 
evening, March 30 ; and once at Holyoke, before the Teachers' 
Institute, before an audience of a thousand, on Friday even- 
ing, April 4. 

" Rev. Mr. C. has written me, saying his young men wish to 
obtain the whole course of sermons which I have delivered to 
young men. If I will go up the last two Sabbath evenings of 
each month, they will send for me and bring me home. My 
strength permitting, I shall undertake this extra labor." 

This course of sermons to young men he delivered as here 
proposed, in the neighboring town of Chicopee, driving over 
every Sunday after preaching in the afternoon to his own peo- 
ple. It was his custom to preach sermons in courses, deliver- 
ing them one each month or fortnight. These courses inva- 
riably excited unusual interest, and by their continuity of 
thought produced a more permanent impression than his 
more sporadic efforts. Regarding one of these series he 
writes : — 



110 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



"May 25, 1862. 

" I have written during the week and have to-day preached 
the closing sermon of my series on ' The Women of the Bible.' 
The subject was 'Mary sitting at Jesus' feet.' It was the most 
directly and strictly religious of any one of the course. It is 
a relief to me to get through this labor, for nine of the twelve 
have been entirely new; and as the sermons are longer than 
ordinary, and written with more historical illustration and 
elaborate care than the majority of my discourses, they have 
cost me a good deal of weary toil. After all, if I can approach 
any nearer my ideal, I am repaid for all my studious and anx- 
ious painstaking. There is an exhilaration in the work, when 
mind and soul are deeply interested, and there is a joy in the 
accomplishment, when a finished sermon is produced, which 
more than repays me for the solicitude and fatigue. I have 
also a high hope of a useful result, although I may not discover 
any immediate, visible effect in the congregation. The pres- 
ent series has been kindly received. I hoj^e it will have its 
effect in exalting the general ideas as to woman's duty and 
privilege, if it does not inspire any single mind with sublime 
aims of scholarly accomplishment and religious usefulness. 

" I wrote a long sermon last week on ' The Character of 
Hannah, or the Influence of the Praying Mother over the 
Son.' Four new sermons within the last ten days, a sociable 
last Monday evening, a lecture at Tatham school-house, last 
Wednesday evening, my usual Thursday evening lecture, a 
school examination Friday, visitations on the sick Friday and 
Saturday, are my excuses for failing to send you a letter last 
week. It was simply impossible, if I would preserve the two 
lobes of my brain from war and secession." 

Yet with all these labors he found time to write letters of 
condolence, of friendly remembrance, and of counsel. He 
was frequently in the receipt of letters requesting his advice, 
especially from young men. To such letters he always re- 
sponded most cheerfully. Here is a letter which he wrote 
to a college classmate of his son. 

"June 4, 1864. 

"Mr. J. G.-D : 

" My Dear Son, — Your letter of the 14th ult. gave me un- 
feigned joy. You have a warm place in my heart, and will 
have so long as I live. Nearly five years ngo the fact that you 
were A.'s room-mate enlisted my strong desires for your wel- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Ill 



fare. His friendship for you, his frequent descriptions of your 
characteristics and progress, your letters to him, your articles 
in the Williams Quarterly, awakened ray esteem. My personal 
acquaintance with you heightened that esteem. I have known 
but few men who have won so entirely my love. I have great 
confidence that your life will be one of active, intelligent devo- 
tion to Christ, of beauty, power, and usefulness. I thank you 
most sincerely for your expression of friendly interest in me, 
and for the sympathetic and confidential tone of your letter. 
If there are any experiences of my life, or reflections of my 
mind, which may seem to you a help in reaching your own 
conclusions as to duty, it will be a true delight to me to com- 
municate them to you. An interchange of thought with you 
at any future time, on any subject of general interest, will be 
to me a privilege. You ask my views of a call to the ministry. 
Probably I should not accept the ideas of many persons as to 
a 'special invitation from above.' The call of God to the min- 
istry comes as it does to any sacred and useful work, by rea- 
soning from ordinary facts and natural principles of law and 
duty. It is not an audible voice ; it is not a miraculous sign ; 
it is not a supernatural interposition in any other sense than 
this : the teachings of the Holy Spirit are always supernatural, 
to be obtained by holy meditation, spiritual living, much study, 
and much prayer. The qualifications for the ministry are spe- 
cial. If you have those, my dear young friend, you have the 
only special call which God gives since the days of prophets 
and apostles. The first of these is an eminent standard of 
piety, and a constant, strong endeavor to reach that standard. 
I cannot doubt that you have this qualification. The second 
is an education, liberal in the large and beautiful sense of the 
word, freeing the mind, not only from the weakness of igno- 
rance, but from all vulgarity, prejudice, fanaticism, and cant. 
This you have. The third is the power of communicating 
knowledge, both by tongue and pen, so as to interest and thrill 
a public audience. This you have. The fourth is a passion for 
souls, so that you feel that the great object of your life is to 
save men from spiritual death, and so that the pressure of mo- 
tive is so strong upon you, that you are compelled to say, ' Woe 
is me if I do not consecrate myself to this object.' The fifth 
is a willingness to make important sacrifices for the privilege 
of leading men to Christ. You must reckon up beforehand 
the cost, and be prepared to take your pay in heaven. If you 
have that amount of genius and toil and adaptation to the dif- 
ferent professions which I believe you possess, you can acquire 
more money and more fame in the law, more money and an 



112 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



equal amount of fame in the medical profession, more fame 
and an equal amount of money in a professor's chair, more 
money if not more fame in journalism, more fame if not more 
money in authorship. A few men — eloquent preachers like 
Dr. E-. S. Storrs, Jr., powerful theologians like Dr. Kathaniel 
Taylor, sagacious biblical interpreters like Dr. Edward Rob- 
inson — may acquire both fortune and reputation from their 
religious labors ; but the usual lot of ministers is to be poor 
and unknown. When I say poor, I do not mean beggars, but 
deprived of many comforts and privileges which riches give, 
and obliged always to practise close economy. When I say 
unknown, 1 do not mean that the faithful minister is not emi- 
nently beloved and honored in a limited circle, but that he is 
destitute of a wide public reputation. The vast majority of 
ministers must wait till eternity shall give them riches and 
renown. This is the question for the young candidate to settle, 
Am I willing to surrender affluence and honor for the sake of 
saving men? If you have the other qualifications I have 
mentioned, as I believe you have, and are ready to answer this 
last question in the affirmative, I think, my dear Mr. D., that 
God calls you to the ministry. It is a sacred, noble, blessed 
work. Its toils are arduous, its trials many, its responsibilities 
sometimes crushing, its joys unsurpassed. Christ invites your 
co-operation ; souls need your help ; infidelity and error and 
sin, with malignant and mighty strokes, are battling it for the 
supremacy ; truth, wounded and bleeding, faint yet invulner- 
able, cries out for succor. The harvest is great, the reapers 
are few. It shall be my constant prayer that God will give you 
wisdom and grace to decide this momentous question aright." 

Shortly after beginning his work in West Springfield, Dr. 
Foster wrote this long and affectionate letter to an aged and 
honored deacon in John-street Church. 

"December 11, 1861. 
" Dea. and Mrs. W. : 

"My very Dear Friends-, — I did not think that two months 
would pass before I should write to you, and disclose the 
emotions of a heart full of gratitude to you for your kindness 
and full of esteem for your many excellences. It is a most 
unfortunate feature of the minister's lot, that, on account of 
failure of health, excess of labors, falling-off of support, he 
is liable to be torn from the endeared associations where all 
his affections are planted, and, in his feebleness and hopeless- 
ness, to be compelled to go through the multiplied toils and 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 113 



solicitudes necessary to find a new home and to gather new 
friends. In all my changes God has graciously favored me. I 
leave dear friends behind; I find efficient and generous helpers 
where I go. But it is painful to make the transfer. There 
are wounds of the heart ; there are disappointments of hope ; 
there are labors prematurely ended. Memories, dear indeed 
and blessed, but still memories only, must be substituted for 
rich experiences. Bright anticipations must be given up till 
eternity shall readjust the dislocations of earth, and heaven 
shall bring together the parted. I entertain no shadow of 
doubt as to the necessity of my last exchange of pulpits. I 
have found a warm-hearted, intelligent, noble people ; but you 
will not think it strange, and no sensitive, understanding 
heart will blame me, if I say the sadness of my parting with 
the John-street people is still fresh as in the day of my 
removal. I remember those improving interviews with high- 
minded friends ; I remember those conferences and prayer- 
meetings, where the thoughts were instructed by opportune 
remarks, and the heart was lifted up to God by believing 
supplication ; I remember those social circles, where geniality, 
vivacity, warmth of friendship, refinement, good sense, large 
information, were so conspicuous ; I remember those Sabbaths 
of Christian aspiration, and thoughtfulness, and praise, and 
prayer; I remember those deceased members of the church, 
with whom we had often taken sweet counsel, who went 
from us in the triumphs of faith, and who cease not, we fondly 
believe, to feel an interest in the prosperity of the church and 
the welfare of friends they have left behind. I remember the 
invalid sufferers, cut off from many social and earthly priv- 
ileges, but recompensed by exalted spiritual joys. I remember 
with peculiar emotions the Sabbath-school concerts, and the 
children and youth there gathered, whom I have often 
addressed, and for whose salvation I have fervently longed. 
I could not forget if I would, — surely I would not if I could. 

" Dear members of John-street Church and congregation, as 
well remembered and as dear to-day as in the day of my 
dismission, as well remembered and as dear years hence as in 
the days of our intimate acquaintance ! May God hold them 
all in the hollow of his hand, and bless them with all temporal 
prosperity and heavenly grace. There is one heart weighed 
down by a heavy sense of obligation, that will always long for 
their joy, and that is the heart of their late pastor. 

" I said I had not found time to write. You will not won- 
der at this. I left Lowell for the sake of rest; but during the 
whole of my search for another home, and of my candidate- 



114 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



ship here, rest was impossible. For the time being, anxieties 
were greatly multiplied, and the pressure of foreboding was 
heavy upon my heart. N.'s sickness, although it was allevi- 
ated by wonderful kindness, threw me into deep distress. The 
plant which is taken from its native soil, although it may be 
set in a luxuriant garden, droops for a time ; so our hopes and 
strength, in the transit from Lowell to West Springfield, gave 
tokens of the fading of their brightness and the withering of 
their greenness. I believe we have not passed away from one 
' sunny side ' to encounter unbroken darkness. I believe that 
the summer will come, and that the bursting of buds and 
flowers, and the ripening of glad fruits, will yet greet our eye, 
but for a time autumn desolation seemed around us. It was 
not the fault of this admirable people, nor of this most beauti- 
ful place, — let me carefully avoid making such an impression, — 
but it was the fault of our own cherished memories and cling- 
ing affections, which would not easily be rooted out of their 
old place. My time since I came here has been very fully oc- 
cupied. I have made more than eighty calls on as many families 
of my peojue ; we have received at our house calls from 
more than a hundred persons. I have made new preparations 
for all evening meetings, held twice a week and sometimes 
three times a week. It is only within a fortnight that I have 
felt I had leisure for any calm review of the past, or any 
tranquil enjoyment of the present. Dea. W., my brother in 
the Lord, my Christian helper, my aged, venerated, dearly 
loved friend, how shall I thank you or reward you for all that 
you have done for me ? I have felt that I could always lean 
upon you. At every meeting, if you had health, you were there ; 
at every meeting, no matter ' though storms were in the sky,' 
no matter though agitations were shaking society, no matter 
though the church seemed in a state of decline and sinners 
were unconverted, no matter whether the attendance was 
small or great, whether the hearts of others appeared warm or 
cold, your help was prompt, your thoughts were quickening, 
your prayers were fervent. In all my debility, perplexity, 
despondency, and need, I found your counsels wise and your 
sympathies quickly rendered. The Lord reward you for your 
fidelity to your pastor and your devotion to the church. Not 
Aaron or Hur strengthened the hands of Moses more than you 
have mine. You deserve in the decline of your life, to cheer 
and hallow the remainder of your days, a pastor endowed 
with the wisdom of God and full of the Holy Ghost. May 
God grant to you and the church a minister of that type. I 
address you, Dea, W\, by name, not excluding your family 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 115 



from my grateful recollections, nor from my descriptions of 
Christian fidelity. I feel myself equally indebted to all the 
members of your family. My kind and generous and most 
estimable friends, my constant heart-throbs will beat in thank- 
fulness to you and in prayers for your welfare. 
"Very affectionately yours." 

The period covered by the great rebellion fell mostly within 
this pastorate. This terrible war had been foreseen by Dr. 
Foster long before it began, and had been often prophesied in 
his letters. In West Springfield, as in Lowell, as might have 
been expected, he took an active part, and exerted a wide 
influence in staying up the hands of the government. An 
extract from a letter to his son, dated July 25, 1862, gives 
most modestly a remarkable instance of his influence in the 
town. 

"I have had a large amount of business on hand since you 
left. After the speech which I made on Monday evening, a 
committee of the town came to me to solicit a sermon for the 
Sabbath. I was unwilling, but they were urgent. They said 
volunteering had stopped. Every family almost had been 
visited by the committee, to procure enlistments, but in vain. 
If some public address did not awaken a new impulse of 
patriotism and self-devotion in this town, at least a compulsory 
draft would be indispensable. I put myself to my heaviest 
work, and by midnight of Saturday had a discourse prepared, 
entirely new, of an hour's length. Rev. Mr. P. and all his 
people came out to hear it. Another meeting was appointed 
for Monday evening. E. came over from Chicopee Falls and 
spoke more than an hour. Mr. P. made a very earnest speech, 
offering himself for the cause. The house was crowded full, 
galleries and lower tiers. C. played the organ. We had the 
music of clarion and trombone and drum, a band from West- 
field. Our own choir sang very finely three anthems. On the 
whole I have not seen a more enthusiastic outburst of patriot- 
ism in any city or village. Franklin Smith, a member of the 
church, a selectman of the town, a young man of business 
talent and intellectual vigor, came forward and offered himself 
to the cause, leaving his twin babies, one year old, to the mer- 
cies of the Lord. Mr. Richards, one of the most promising 
members of our church, did the same. His feeble wife and 
two little children he committed as a sacred trust to the care 



116 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



of friends. Mr. Bellows, an earnest church-member, leaving a 
wife and little boy ; Mr. Chapin, long a church-member, 
leaving a wife and a family of children, both noble men, gave 
themselves to the country. Others followed. The quota of 
the town is nearly filled. We have given some of our best 
talent, integrity, and piety, and blood to the war. God save 
the Republic ! I am still despondent of the cause. I have 
faith in the generals ; I have faith in the army ; I have faith 
in President Lincoln and his Cabinet ; I have faith in the spirit 
of patriotic devotion which sways the people of the North. 
But we have all underestimated the military power of the 
South, the energy and science and genius of her generals, and 
the fierce, swift, death-dealing valor of her troops. We have 
on our hands an immense, deadly, well-nigh immeasurable 
undertaking. Our counsels are distracted. Contradictory 
theories are entertained and vehemently pushed by patriotic, 
instructed, antislavery men. We have no unity in Congress, 
nor in the public mind. We differ as to methods ; we differ 
as to aims ; we differ as to men. Success is made the criterion 
of merit. A slight disaster suffered by a general, throws him 
from his pedestal, looses a thousand slanderous tongues, 
smirches all his fair fame. No commander that ever lived, 
not even Washington, nor Wellington, nor Napoleon, could 
be judged on such principles, and still maintain his military 
strength. We are a fickle, changeable, excitable people, 
driven by the superficial gales of the hour, not by any settled, 
permanent judgment of measures or men. The Lord have 
mercy upon us ! " 

Another letter shows us his sentiments towards the soldiers ? 
and regarding the war. 

"We are drifting, in my judgment, more swiftly than the 
French nation ever drifted, into a war of factions at the North, 
and into all the terrors of a remorseless military despotism. 
But I turn from the mournful theme to say, that in the gloom 
and horror of the midnight, there shine out upon us bright 
and beautiful stars. I have been reading the life of Frazer 
Stearns, son of the president of Amherst College, a volume 
written by his father. It is a beautiful and touching memorial. 
You know my fondness for biography ; and in the present hour 
of national anguish and national throes, I am turned irresistibly 
to battle scenes and battle thoughts and battle martyrs. We 
have lost twenty generals by battle wounds, most of them noble 
and admirable men, and one of them. General Mitchel, the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 117 

grandest character of them all, by the malaria of the South. 
We have lost hundreds, yes, thousands of officers, of different 
grades, who have beautifully lived and sublimely died. I am 
preserving sketches of them as fast as I can find them. If 
written out with care, it would be a list of obituary notices 
the most tender and thrilling the annals of the world afford." 

In the spring of 1863, Dr. Foster, while engaged in sawing 
wood, — for he was indefatigable in habits of daily exercise, — 
fell on his saw-horse and dislocated his left arm at the shoulder. 
From this accident he suffered extremely for four months with 
constant pain. Being unable to write at a desk, he then con- 
tracted the habit, which followed him through life ever after, 
of writing on a tablet held in his lap. A letter is here inserted 
which was written by him while under this disability. It is 
valuable as showing the physical infirmities with which he 
constantly struggled, as describing his methods of pulpit prep- 
aration, and as referring to certain offers made him from 
Philadelphia at this time, and which, in his depressed and 
enfeebled condition, he was in no mood to consider. 

"November 12, 1863. 

" My Beloved A , — I am still compelled to write, hold- 
ing my paper in my lap, and granting to my feeble and well- 
nigh helpless left arm all possible favors. Rev. Dr. Sprague 
called upon me six weeks ago. He told me that he once dis- 
located his right shoulder, and, notwithstanding, kept on his 
customary writing day by day, and his customary preaching, 
without losing a Sabbath. Circumstances alter cases, or else 
other people's shoulders and nerves are very different from 
mine. It is sixty-four days since my injury, and I cannot now 
place a sheet of letter-paper on a pamphlet and steady it with 
my left hand, resting it on a pillow in my lap, without acute 
and constant pain. I undertook last week to write a sermon, 
but was obliged to desist in less than half an hour on account 
of absolute pain. I have not been free from pain during a 
single hour or half-hour of the last sixty-four days and nights. 
I live on patience and hope ; but I confess that my sufferings 
sometimes encroach upon my patience, and clouds sometimes 
darken my hopes. 

"I preached last Sabbath an extemporaneous sermon, writ- 
ing only the heads and the conclusion, which covered one sheet 



118 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



of note-paper. It is more than twelve years since I have 
preached in any pulpit, either of Lowell or any other town, a 
sermon so entirely unwritten as this sermon was. Perhaps 
this is the design of the Divine Providence in this affliction, 
which has seemed to me so mysterious, that I should be com- 
pelled to lay down the pen, and resort to unwritten sermoniz- 
ing. The labor during the time of preparation and during 
the time of preaching also, is the most intense and exhausting 
form of brain-work to which it is possible for me to be driven. 
I have given to this sort of preparation for funerals, prayer- 
meetings, platform addresses, lectures, etc., years of the most 
tremendous application. I have very rarely made a five-min- 
utes' or a teu-minutes' address on any subject, or anywhere, 
without studying it for hours. If I preach an unwritten ser- 
mon, I must go over in my soliloquies every division and sub- 
division, sentence by sentence and word by word, four or five 
or six times. You can imagine what the draft is upon ner- 
vous strength. 

" I do not go to Philadelphia, first, because I think my labors 
there and the accompanying mental distresses would be more 
than I am able to endure ; second, because my people here 
have given me most touching and generous proofs of kindness, 
and have forborne to press me in my weakness, and I owe 
them acknowledgments of love and labor. I have not been 
able to read much for the last two months. I take up a pam- 
phlet and read half a page ; I look over my bundles of extracts, 
and catch a glance at some interesting paragraph here and 
there ; I read a short story of mingled tragedy and humor. I 
think of the pear-trees I have planted, and of the wonderful 
bell-shaped and golden fruits that shall hereafter grow upon 
them. I think of my children dead, and of my children liv- 
ing; of the bountiful qualities which have blossomed in their 
character, and which I believe shall ripen bountifully in time, 
and with glory and joy in eternity. I use all possible devices 
to recruit my weary, throbbing, and anxious hours, for, as I 
am not equal to consecutive thought, amusement is all I can 
accomplish, and this only with Sisyphus-rolling of the stone 
uphill. Good-night, my beloved. Pray for me still. Your 
father." 

The great kindness of the people referred to in the extract 
above was a gift of $300 made by them to supply the needs 
which came upon him in consequence of this accident, a gift 
which not only from its intrinsic value, but as an expression of 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 119 

love, was most gratefully appreciated. But its preeiousness as 
an evidence of esteem can be best understood from the head- 
ing of the subscription-paper which accompanied the gift. It 
was as follows : — 

"We, the undersigned, members of the church and congre- 
gation of the First Parish in West Springfield, sympathizing 
deeply with our pastor in the protracted illness of himself and 
family, sensible of his largely increased expenses for medical 
and pulpit services, do most cheerfully agree to pay the sum 
severally set against our names, in order to relieve him in part 
of these burdens, and to afford him some marked evidence of 
our most sincere and affectionate regards for himself and 
family." 

Previous to this accident, and subsequently, after his health 
was restored, he frequently lectured before the Teachers' Insti- 
tutes which were held in different parts of the State. The 
Hon. Joseph White, of Williamstown, Mass., formerly a 
parishioner of his in Lowell, at that time secretary of the 
Board of Education, had the charge of these Institutes, and 
availed himself of Dr. Foster's aid whenever it could be ob- 
tained. It was thus that Dr. Foster came to speak on such 
occasions at Holyoke, Chicopee, Westiield, Hadley, Ware, 
Lee, Conway, Becket, Hatfield, Dudley, and other places in 
Massachusetts. Some of the themes on which he spoke to the 
teachers of the State were "Self-Culture," "John Milton," 
"The Dull Scholar," and "Reading." The following letter 
refers to one of the lectures he gave most frequently. 

" My lecture before the Teachers' Association at Chicopee 
consumed the whole of week before last. It was very kindly 
received. The officers of the Association have asked for its 
publication. I wrote it in a colloquial style, taking three 
abstract points for the hinges and skeleton of my discourse, 
then crowding in all the literary and biographical incidents I 
could gather from my memory, after a life of somewhat 
omnivorous reading, — all the incidents, I mean, which could 
illustrate my subject, viz. ' The Connection between Dullness 
in Childhood and Genius in Manhood.' My hinges were the 
following: 1, Illustrate truth; 2, Secure docility; 3, Study 
the child's natural bias of mind. Then with sufficient abstract 



120 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

thought to expound and enforce the lessons, I referred to 
Walter Scott, Humphrey Davy, Isaac Barrow, Samuel J. Mills, 
Patrick Henry, Thomas Scott the commentator, Sargent S. 
Prentiss, Nathaniel Taylor, and some others. The Franklin 
County Association have sent me a request to deliver it before 
their body, the last of the month." 

As his work went on, in the fall of 1863 and the spring of 
1864, his church enjoyed a revival of religion. In June, 1863, 
he was intensely desirous of such a work of grace, and his 
words are almost a prophecy. 

" June 29, 1863. 

" God be thanked for this sweet home, for this kind and 
intelligent people ; God give me strength and grace to labor 
with some degree of success corresponding to my opportunity ! 
I long for the salvation of these souls and for the enlargement 
of this church. The architect is known by his work; the 
proof of a right agricultural theory is a large harvest in the 
autumn ; the proof of legal science is to win a case in court ; 
the proof of medical skill is to cure the sick. Genius is vain ; 
knowledge is vain ; plausible, profound philosophical theories 
are vain, if they do not issue in important practical results. 
What is the proof of my ministry? Must it not be Christians 
built up in their most holy faith, souls plucked from the jaws 
of everlasting burnings ? What fruit have I of my toils, what 
recompense for my anxious studies, if the impenitent are not 
brought to Christ ? I confess that I have sometimes longed 
for riches, so many privileges and enjoyments, and so many 
opportunities of doing good can be purchased with money. I 
have sometimes longed for office, imagining that I could use 
the control which authority gives for the benefit of my fellow- 
men. But after all, it is my profound conviction, that there is 
no reward like that of a servant of God, who labors faithfully 
for souls. I think I can say, Farewell fortune, farewell fame, 
farewell power, if I may but have some ransomed ones in the 
day of judgment to present as my joy and crown." 

The interest first manifested itself in a feeling frequently 
and tearfully expressed among the people, that such earnest 
preaching threw a weight of responsibility on the church, and 
that they would be accountable if souls were not saved. The 
meetings became very tender and earnest ; the brethren of the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 121 

church went out two by two and called on every family within 
the parish limits ; a day of fasting and prayer was observed ; 
the services were obtained of Dr. Foster's brother, Rev. Wm. 
Cowper Foster, then employed to labor as evangelist in Hamp- 
den County, Mass., by the County Conference of Congrega- 
tional Churches. Dr. Foster preached for seven weeks almost 
every evening in different districts of the town, and held fre- 
quent inquiry meetings. Before his brother's engagement, and 
after it was ended, he was assisted for some Aveeks by a 
brother of one of his parishioners, Rev. Moses Smith. 

Most precious results followed these measures ; the church 
was greatly quickened, and a large number of people, young 
and middle-aged, were hopefully converted. The following 
letters of different dates give detailed accounts of many of the 
facts recorded above. 

"Sunday Eve, Eeb. 8, 1864. 

"My Dear A , — The work of God is going on with en- 
larging power, manifestly and undeniably to all minds. The 
meeting this evening in the church was the largest I have 
known at any evening service. Mr. Smith has preached for 
us ten times, and rendered opportune and admirable help. 
My strength is inadequate to my duties, and I may sink in the 
midst of the course, but I have occasion to praise the Lord 
for his great goodness in granting me to see this widely- 
spreading salvation." 

"Wednesday, Feb. 11, 1864. 

" My Beloved Wife, — It is ten o'clock, p. m. I have 
occupied two hours in the evening prayer-meeting. Five new 
inquirers were in, making more than thirty in all with whom I 
have conversed, twenty of them indulging hopes. Thirty old 
and uncertain hopes revived. Our meetiugs are becoming 
more and more solemn. The spirit of God is evidently in 
every house. Every member of the church was appointed 
last week on a committee of visitation. Reports have been 
made to-night from two thirds of them. Members have gone 
forth speaking and praying, who have not been heard to speak 
and pray for years. They have come in here to-night with 
hearts warmed, encouraged, strengthened ; the Holy Spirit is 
evidently moving them to new hope and new fidelity. They 
say that they went forth with fear and trembling, and the 
utmost reluctance, but God has helped them, and now they 
9 



122 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



would be ready to go over the same duty again with joy and 
with holy confidence. I had three inquirers in on Monday, 
and was out yesterday in the Chicopee district, visiting. Have 
a preaching service to-morrow evening in the town hall, Friday 
evening in Tatham school-house." 

"March 9, 1864. 
"My Dearest Emily, — By vote of the brethren, we devoted 
the whole of yesterday as a day of church fasting, humiliation, 
and prayer. Three meetings were held; at ten and a half 
a. m., two p. m., and seven in the evening. More people 
were out than have attended a church fast here for thirty 
years. The brethren spoke and prayed from ten and a half 
o'clock, a. m. s till nearly sundown, with only an hour's inter- 
mission, without cessation. I did not <5ccupy ten minutes all 
day long. It was a very solemn and impressive meeting. 
Our meetings have now continued seventy successive days. 

Mr. has been home and came to see me. He said that 

after writing to me his mind was in deep anguish for days. 
The darkness continued until the day my letter reached him. 
He took it from the post-office in the beginning of the after- 
noon and carried it to his room. He read two pages, and the 
tears began to flow. He laid it down and could not refrain 
from a long and bitter season of weeping. He took the letter 
again, and read it through. He then kneeled down, and in 
earnest and humble prayer, as he hoped, consecrated himself 
to Christ. The following Sabbath was such a Sabbath of 
delight as he never had before. Since then his peace had 
been like a river. With tears and trembling words of grati- 
tude he expressed his obligations. I think God will lead this 
young man on to an eminently beautiful and useful Christian 
life." 



It is interesting to know what themes occupy a successful 
and earnest pastor in a time of revival. The following extract 
shows what were the topics which engaged Dr. Foster's atten- 
tion at this time, and the treatment he gave them. 

" Yesterday forenoon I preached on ' The Joy of Salvation.' 
I. Its nature as resulting from — 1, The pardon of sin ; 2, Com- 
munion with Christ ; 3, Regeneration ; 4, Progressive sanctifi- 
cation; 5, Hope of heaven. II. Its power as a motive to holy 
action. Afternoon sermon, 'Sources of Church Prosperity.' 
I. Presentation of God's truth. II. Presence of the Holy 
Spirit. III. Holy activity of church members. IV. Power 
of individual influence. Evening sermon, 'Methods of Sub- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 123 



cluing Sin.' I. Form right estimates of the world. II. Medi- 
tate on death and eternity. III. Avoid temptation. IV. Go 
forward in personal duty. Last Friday evening sermon, ' Come 
thou with us, and we will do you good.' I. The Christian is 
on a pilgrimage. II. Worldly possessions are unsatisfactory. 

III. Two entirely contrary paths lead out of this land of exile. 

IV. The glory of God the Christian's ruling desire. V. The 
loss of souls a heavy burden upon his heart. VI. His tender 
regard for neighbors and friends, and his labors for Jheir salva- 
tion. VII. His peculiar regard for the members of his family 
and kindred circle, and his labors for their salvation. VIII. 
The blessedness of the new convert. Last Thursday evening 
sermon, ' Come thou and all thy house into the ark.' I. The 
deluge a type of the judgment. II. The ark a type of Christ. 
III. Responsibility of pious parents for their children. IV. 
Duty of unconverted parents, — 1, To their own souls; 2, To 
their families. One week ago Sunday, 'Grounds of Full As- 
surance of Hope.' I. Its evidences existing in the instructed 
intellect. II. Its evidences in the renewed affections. III. Its 
evidences in the life. IV. Its mighty power as a spring of 
action. One week ago Saturday, ' Christian Watchfulness ' 
(Mark 13:35). I. Our tendencies to spiritual slumber — its 
cause, — 1, False ideas of God; 2, False opinions of self; 3, 
Absorbing worldly cares. II. God's methods of waking the 
sleeper, — 1, Common means of grace; 2, Sickness, calamity, 
death; 3, Special strivings of the Holy Spirit. III. The 
Master cometh at uncertain and unexpected times. IV. The 
nature of watchfulness, — 1, Great thoughtfulness and con- 
stant expectation ; 2, Resistance of sin and waiting for oppor- 
tunities to glorify Christ. One week ago Thursday, — 'The 
Effect of Religious Reasoning' (Isa. 1 : 18). I. To give cor- 
rect views of truth and duty. II. To exalt the aims of the 
life. III. To banish doubt and indecision. Reflections, — 1, 
How fearful is sin ; 2, How precious is the Saviour ; 3, How 
joyful is repentance. Two weeks ago Sunday, 'Characteristics 
of Love to Christ' (Eph. 3 : 17). I. It is a fervent, profound 
affection. II. It is a permanent affection. III. It is an intel- 
ligent, believing affection. IV. It is an elevating affection. 

V. It is a self-sacrificing affection. VI. It is calculated to give 
a mighty power over other minds." 

The last of March he sums up the work as follows : — 

"March 28, 1864. 
"A week ago last Saturday, after preaching four sermons at 
Holyoke the previous Saturday and Sunday, and after preach- 



124 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER; 



ing four sermons at home on the four preceding days, I 
struggled with most intense effort to prepare one sermon for 
the following day. In the afternoon, up to midnight, and on 
the next morning up to the church hour, I succeeded in driv- 
ing the exhausted machinery into action, and preached from 
the text, 'Awake, thou that sleepest,' one of my most intensi- 
fied sermons, but it was at a terrible cost. Since this revival 
began, I have made more than sixty addresses, thirty-five of 
them with all the study which I can now give to new sermons, 
thirty-five of them extemporaneous addresses, costing me only 
the premeditation of the hour, and yet causing me very great 
anxiety. The revival still progresses ; two new inquirers came 
to converse with me last week. The meeting last evening has 
never been surpassed in solemnity since the beginning of the 
interest. We may reckon fifty, probably, impenitent sinners 
converted and timid hopes revealed and confirmed, as the sub- 
jects of God's grace in this time of His loving dispensation. 
Our parish numbers about nine hundred souls; this is one to 
eighteen. Springfield has four hundred converts in a popula- 
tion of thirty thousand — one to seventy-five. God has given 
us a great blessing, for which, if this were the only work of 
our life, we might well give Him devoutest and everlasting 
praise." 



But the incessant strain he had been under in this work for 
three or four successive months, proved too much for his 
strength. His exhausted frame gave way, and for weeks he 
could not study. He writes of his condition thus : — 

"April 8, 1864. 

" My Dear A , — I have not written a sentence, good, 

bad, or indifferent, for three weeks. My letter to you was my 
last convulsive throe. I preached, for forty successive days, 
what was equivalent to one sermon a day, making five sixths 
of them new. Overworking the brain in this sort of style, 
the machine broke a rivet and stopped running. Whether I 
shall be able to wind up the watch again, remains to be seen. 
Excessive exertion has strained the spring near to snapping. 
This season of the year debilitates me ; anxiety for my family 
overwhelms me. I preached two old manuscripts yesterday 
(Fast day) ; three old manuscripts last Sunday. I expect soon 
to be regarded as an old parchment myself, yellow, illegible, 
and disagreeable." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 125 

As the summer opened, one of his deacons, appreciating his 

exhausted state, with great kindness took him to Saratoga and 

entertained him there for some time. Thence Dr. Foster went 

to New Hampshire to visit among his relatives and friends. 

The following extracts are from letters written during this 

vacation. 

" Saratoga Springs, June 8, 1864. 

"I am passing my time quite in an indolent, pleasant, recre- 
ating dream. I walk with Deacon Southworth four times a 
day, an hour each time. I drink of the waters three times a 
day, four tumblers each dose. I wander along the valley of 
medicines and through the streets of refinement, and past the 
meadows of green, and over the hills of sand, and into the 
groves of pine. I saunter through the grounds of Union Hall, 
its lawn so closely shaven, its elms and oaks and ash trees 
and bass-wood and maples and evergreens, making so agree- 
able a shade. I take my dinner of boiled mutton, peas, quince 
pie, ice-cream, and nuts. I intoxicate my soul with the con- 
templation of soldierly devotion and heroism. I go off in the 
chariot of imagination to explore the perils and the sufferings 
which A. is passing through. I turn the wings of my airy 
convoy on the home-stretch towards West Springfield, pausing 
with the sick and the bereaved, and the anxious and the 
thoughtful, and the sympathetic and the friendly and the true- 
hearted. I make up my long arrears of correspondence. I 
retire at nine and a half o'clock. I buy the Albany Evening 
Journal and the New York Herald, and after reading them, 
spend just as much time as I can in cutting them into proper 
size and arranging them under suitable topics for preservation. 
I loiter in the bookstore and look at the banks of volumes and 
the faces in the frontispiece. I lie down and try to sleep and 
can't. I get up and jot down a topic or a thought for a future 
sermon. I go out and look over the fences of the many beau- 
tiful gardens of the town, to see if I can find any pear trees. 
I look in vain. Oh, the absence of taste ! Thus I get through 
the weary day, strenuose nihil agendo. And thus I get 
through this fruitless, zigzag letter. A loving adieu. I am 
too much spent to sign my name." 

"Hanover, N. H., June 20, 1864. 
"I shall returr^to West Springfield to labor for the perpe- 
tuity and increase of the revival there, with devout gratitude 
to God that I am permitted to be employed in so blessed a 
work. I have been reading lately a good deal about the dif- 



126 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



ferent methods of conducting revivals of religion, and the 
results which followed from the toils of Nettleton and Griffin 
and Finney and Hammond. I think that Nettleton was one 
of the most beautiful, wise, and blessed Christian souls that 
ever lived. Griffin was not an evangelist, but a pastor of 
extraordinary spirituality, unction, and power, laboring con- 
stantly with direct practical effort, and with great success, for 
the conversion of sinners. Finney and Hammond have accom- 
plished, in many instances, a large amount of good, but I am 
more doubtful of their doctrine and system of action. I have 
'The Select Thoughts of Payson,' 'The Pastoral Sketches of 
Wisner and Spencer,' ' The Sermons of Finney,' ' The Vol- 
ume of Revival Incidents' which Hammond has published. 
I hope soon to get time to read these volumes, not without 
profit, I trust, to my own soul and to the souls of my congre- 
gation." 

With restored health Dr. Foster spent the year following, 
1865, in the ordinary routine of duties. While on his summer 
vacation he wrote the following interesting letter from Dart- 
mouth College regarding the commencement : — 

" I have had a very interesting and pleasant commencement. 
Rev. Dr. Adams's address, Tuesday evening, which I heard, 
was poetic and clear, rich in thought, replete with vivacity, 
illustration, graphic language, graceful and forcible delivery. 
Hon. Mr. Bullock, Wednesday p. m., had a most valuable and 
fascinating oration. It was historical, philosophical, and pro- 
found, yet clear as the sunlight, and rhetorically beautiful as 
the autumn leaves. In his style of thought, expression, and 
delivery, he comes nearer to Ruf us Choate than any other man 
I have heard. He has the same involved, complicated, accu- 
mulative, yet most impressive linking together of successive 
thoughts under one grammatical construction. He has the same 
enthusiasm of a rapt soul, the same nervous vitality of frame, 
which pervades with a constant glow, with an ever-warming 
and brightening heat, his "whole action and thought. He is a 
beautiful and noble specimen of an orator, and will help to fill 
the great places left vacant by Webster and Everett and Story 
and Choate. His tribute to Dartmouth College as the educa- 
tional agency which had given to the nation great and good 
men, his special tribute to Webster, to Choate^, to Chief-justice 
Chase, to Professor Brown, the successful delineator of Choate's 
character, was the most impressive thing of the kind I ever list- 
ened to. My class did not hold a meeting. Only four, out of 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 127 



thirty men now living, were there. General Marston and Gen- 
eral Shepley were two of the four. General Shepley made a very 
eloquent speech on the proposition to erect a Memorial Hall, 
commemorative of alumni lost in the war. Professor Patter- 
son, Di*. Adams, Chief-justice Chase, Eichard Kimball, of New 
York City ; the author, Stoddard ; B. Colby, register of IT*. S. 
treasury, spoke very ably on the same question. Chief-justice 
Chase spoke twice, his longest speech — and a most lucid, con- 
vincing argument it was — on 'The Expediency of Negro Suf- 
frage.' This was at commencement dinner. I had the very 
great, and very unexpected, and very accidental honor of sitting 
next to Chief-justice Chase at the dinner-table, and of enjoy- 
ing his conversation for a whole three-quarters of an hour. 
He is a most child-like and accessible man in his manners, no 
hauteur, no affectation, no distance. He talked with me about 
Cornish, his native town ; about Columbus, the capital of Ohio ; 
about the young graduates, performers of the day ; about the 
Monroe doctrine, one of the topics of discussion on the 
commencement stage, — just as quietly, unostentatiously, as a 
brother would with a brother. In the alumni meeting, as the 
list of deceased graduates of the college was read, I spoke of 
Charles's # accomplishment in the war, occupying some ten 
minutes. His exalted motives from the beginning ; his power 
in enlisting men into the army; his heroism at the battle of 
Shiloh; his patience and unfaltering endurance at Vicksburg; 
his eagle eye and rapid mind as a leader of skirmishers ; his 
faith in God through all periods of military disaster; his devo- 
tion to friends, as well as to country, in the last fearful battle, 
which ended his life, — were the points of my statement. 
Davis spoke very touchingly and eloquently of Daniel's* con- 
secration of himself to a righteous cause. A eulogist will be 
appointed to draw the character and delineate the deeds of 
the soldiers of the college who have fallen in the war." 

In the fall of this year the First Church in West Springfield 
was invited by the First Church in Washington, D. C, to be 
represented on a council called to consider questions pertain- 
ing to the welfare of that church. Dr. Foster accordingly 
went to Washington, and thus wrote to his elder daughter 
concerning his trip : — 

" My visit to Washington was very exhausting, and yet, on 
the whole, very awakening and satisfactory. Boston, Portland, 

* Dr. Foster's brothers, officers in the army, killed in the war, 



128 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER, 



Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, sent 
their representatives, men from nine churches. We had a 
debate of five hours' continuance : first, on the ' Independency 
of the Church ' ; second, on the ' Sufficiency of their Creed ' ; 
third, on their ' Financial Projects for Building a Chur#h Edi- 
fice.' I spoke three times, once on each of the three questions 
before the body, on the first point differing somewhat from 
Dr. Thompson ; on the second, in opposition to Henry Ward 
Beecher's delegate, a self-possessed, fluent, practical lawyer, 
who was very severe in his criticisms on the creed and by-laws 
of the church ; on the third, I disagreed again, pretty widely, 
with Dr. Thompson and his delegate, a lawyer from New York 
City. Rev. Mr. Nichols, of Cincinnati, argued with the law- 
yers. Rev. Dr. Walker, of Portland, was on the line of argu- 
ment which I advocated. Our ^discussions were earnest, but 
entirely amicable and kind. The final decision corresponded 
very nearly with the views I held throughout the debate. I 
enjoy such conflicts of thought and argument, keen but 
friendly, decisive, sometimes incisive, but all in love. It 
sharpens the intellect, as the whetstone the scythe. It affords 
comparison and exhibition of the quality and the calibre of 
different intellects, of the calmness and fairness of the dispo- 
sition, of the soundness of judgment and the extent of knowl- 
edge. It gives fine opportunity for wit and humor, for the 
drawing of analogies, for argument and illustration, for the 
presentation of historical lore, for the exercise of logical and 
poetical faculty. I should love to be a member of Legislature 
or of Congress, and to mingle in the political and historical 
and legal controversies, though I am not sure that it would 
not awaken in me a more independent, combative, dogmatic 
spirit than I now possess. After all, the ministry is the pur- 
est, highest, noblest, most beautiful employment of earth." 

A picture of Dr. Foster's life in West Springfield would be 
notably incomplete, which omitted a mention of his greatly- 
loved garden. He had a natural fondness for gardening, but 
never before, even in his first pastorates in the country, had he 
had a good opportunity of gratifying his taste. Here in West 
Springfield, in connection with the parsonage, was an excellent 
garden, large and very fertile. Dr. Foster worked this land 
constantly, and found in it great profit to his health. He was 
always successful in raising the finest vegetables and fruits, 
though if a profit and loss account had been kept, it probably 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 120 

would have given his labor a poor showing as a business transac- 
tion. The paragraphs in his letters concerning his garden are 
always in his happiest vein. It was here that he became a zeal- 
ous cultivator of pears. He knew the names of all the varieties 
of pears, both dwarf and standard, and could recognize the 
fruit at a glance. He never ceased, from this^time on, to feel 
a keen interest in pear culture, and to the very last of his life 
he cared for his trees with loving assiduity. Of his pears and 
his garden, these are some of the things he said : — 



" What shall I say of my reading ? You will think me a 
degenerate scion of a manly stock. I have out from the library 
six books on pear culture, and I confess that, for the time being, 
biography, history, literary essays, even the reports of the war, 
hold a second place in my interest. I sigh for half an acre of 
ground on which to plant dwarf pears, and for the means of 
their cultivation. One man planted an acre of pear trees, and 
in the fifth year had one hundred and fifty bushels of pears, 
and sold them for eight hundred dollars. An acre of pear 
trees, in full bearing, is estimated to be worth five thousand 
dollars, as it will pay the interest on that sum, and expenses, 
for any number of years. 

"If I had had half an acre of ground when I was settled at 
Henniker, and had planted it with pear trees, I should have 
obtained exercise, air, diversion of thought from the one mo- 
notonous and consuming strain on a minister's mind, which 
would have added ten years to my life, and twenty years to 
the efficiency of it. I say these things as suggestive to you, 
my son, if you ever settle in a pleasant, rural parish, as I hope 
you may. It is not too late for you to learn some things neces- 
sary to a minister's happiness and usefulness. Intense, unre- 
lieved occupation in one solitary direction is a heavy clog 
upon all action. It is too late for me, not exactly to learn, but 
to avail myself practically of knowledge which would have 
been of unspeakable value to me early in my ministry. I 
never knew how to get amusement; I had no relish for rough 
sports; I was chained in society. I was intensely a lover of 
books, and abstract, introspective reflection. I drove in that 
rut until the wheels went in over the hub. I wish to save you 
from my irreparable suffering. Love books, be profoundly 
interested in your ministerial work, but do not neglect to give 
yourself, in some way, suitable relaxation." 



130 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER, 

"Leafy Parsonage, May 17, 1863. 

"My Beloved A , — Yesterday I purchased twenty dwarf 

pear trees (mainly Bartletts and Louis Bon de Jerseys), and 
set them out in my garden, digging twenty holes three feet 
square and two feet deep, carrying twenty pails of water to 
puddle the soil, carting on my wheelbarrow twenty loads of 
decomposed turf, trimming the tree roots and limbs, and fill- 
ing in the dirt around them with care. I believe I have never 
been more tired in my life, unless I make exception of two or 
three most bone-aching occasions. 

" I have been preparing for a hegira to Hanover, and a rus- 
tication there of three weeks. It has been a heavy and 
wearisome work for me to get my garden in preparation for so 
long an absence. I have gone at the weeds as McClellan and 
Banks, McPherson and Sherman, Rosecrans and Rousseau, 
Sedgwick and Sickles, go at the rebels. I have mowed them 
down by the squadron, I have extirpated them, I have confis- 
cated their lands, I have subjugated them, veni, vidi, vici. 
I find that work wearies me. Bones ache; hands hang down; 
interior viscera give signs of pain ; I come into the house at 
night feverish, and thirsty, and weak, and every organ and 
sense says ' Go to bed.' I believe I shall have to change my 
theory ; I used to think three or four hours daily of manual 
toil would help the brain. Perhaps it does, if the constitution 
be vigorous and the endurance be large ; but a feeble frame 
and a shattered, constitution cannot bear a heavy strain in both 
directions. I am between Scylla and Charybdis, — if I do not 
work, I run upon the shallows, body and intellect become dor- 
mant ; if I do work, I run upon the rocks, muscle and soul 
both sink with fatigue. What shall I do? Quit the ministry 
and be a farmer? If the alternative be this, to save the body 
alone, or else lose both mind and body, is it not duty to hold 
on to that one ? " 

" May 25, 1863. 

"We are now in the very crown and glory of the year. 
The last half of May and the whole of June are to me the 
perfection of the season and the joy of life. Every breath is 
an elixir; every opening of the eyes is a sensation of beauty; 
every promise of nature and anticipation of the mind is an 
omen of blessings to come. I bless God for these months of 
the year. My garden has been pressing me, for the spring 
was backward. I have no horse nor plow, and all my work 
is done by the dead-lift. My peas, beans, corn, cucumbers, 
musk-melons, lettuce, beets, parsnips, endive, celery, are 
planted, — .everything but the tomatoes. I have made and 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 131 

sowed ten flower-beds, in addition to your mother's and Emily's ; 
for, if it be possible, especially in the feebleness of Emily's 
health, I would like to mingle beauty with utility, and have 
something to gratify the cultivated mind, as well as the j)hys- 
ical appetite. My apple trees and my strawberry beds are in 
full blossom, and bid fair to give me adequate harvest of fruit. 
I have now forty dwarf pear trees in my garden, and if half 
of them live, and bear fruit within two years, I shall be amply 
repaid. I have planted eighty hills of dahlias, and I expect 
that two thirds of them will be crowned with blossoms in the 
autumn, thanks to the beneficent Lord who giveth flowers. I 
have forty newly hatched chickens, most of them little whities, 
beautiful as snow-flakes of the winter. So you see that, what 
with animate and iu animate pets, with feeding and watering, 
with pruning and weeding, my thoughts find amusement, and 
my hands find employment, my soul receives exhilaration, and 
my blood gets vitalized. I thank God every day for West 
Springfield, for my generous people, and for my beautiful, 
leafy, flowery, fruitful garden." 

During the West Springfield pastorate, Dr. Foster's eldest 
daughter was much of the time away from home, being at first 
at school in Lowell, and subsequently in the family of Dr. Geo. 
W. Garland, of Lawrence,, under medical treatment. The let- 
ters subjoined are written in that peculiarly tender and graceful 
vein which always characterized his intercourse with his be- 
loved daughter. The first letter refers to criticisms that his 
daughter had made on certain candidates whom a pastorless 
church was hearing. 

" Please like the preaching as well as you can. If some mes- 
senger were to come with a communication from your brother 
to you, you would not stop to think of the cut of his coat, or 
the elegance of his manners, or the facility or beauty of his 
diction. 'Give us the message sent; tell us the welfare of the 
dear one!' This would be the first and only urgent demand. 
So of the ambassador from God, with the word of inspired and 
everlasting truth. Does he in very deed bring a message from 
your Elder Brother, your Redeemer, your all-merciful Friend ? 
If so, welcome him gladly and hear him attentively, although 
he had a hundred defects for every one you now discover." 

" West Springfield, Oct. 22, 1861. 
"My Beloved Emily, — Your letter and a letter from A. 
both came to-day, and gave to my heart-pulses a new throb, 



132 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



and to my depressed spirits an upward lift. I seem to be sit- 
ting in your pleasant upper chamber, looking upon two young 
ladies in their rocking-chairs, thankful for the joy they have 
in each other's society, assured that they will try to fit each 
other for usefulness and heaven, and confident that all the in- 
tellectual stores they are acquiring, and all the beautiful and 
lovely accomplishments with which God has endowed them, 
will be gladly and fully consecrated to their Divine Master's 
service. I have been reading for the last two or three days 
the book entitled ' Lady Huntington and Her Friends,' by 
Mrs. Helen C. Knight, of Portsmouth, N. H. Such a sister- 
hood of lovely women, of titled rank, of elegant manners, of 
perfect taste, of high mental culture, perfectly at home in the 
best educated society, perfectly competent in the most literary 
conversations, yet loving the Saviour with a devoted love, and 
finding their highest pleasure in religion, is rarely to be found. 
Lady Selina Huntington, Lady Margaret Hastings, Lady Ger- 
trude Hotham, Lady Fanny Shirley, Lady Ann Erskine, Lady 
Jane Glenorchy, and others of exalted name and fame, were 
among the most attractive exhibitions of piety, and the most 
remarkable instruments of usefulness, of which I have ever 
read. England will bear them on her heart in gratitude be- 
fore God, to the end of time. There are a few modern and 
American names worthy to be written in the same catalogue, 
— Harriet Newell, Mary Lyon, Mary Ware, Ann % Hasseltine 
Judson, Sarah Lanman Smith, Mary Hawes Van Lennep, Hen- 
rietta Hamlin, Emily Chubbuck Judson, Isabella Graham. I 
love to repeat those names over and over ; I love to draw in 
my mind's eye the picture of those angelic lives. I love to 
take the encouragement which such spirituality gives, to other 
waiting, panting, sorrowing souls, to press on towards eminent 
sanctification. Said Margaret Hastings, ' Since I believed in 
the Lord Jesus Christ, I have been as happy as an angel.' Oh, 
my darling daughter, what a payment does heaven give for 
our imperfect services, what a return to our longing desires! " 

On a rainy day, during one of his vacations, he wrote : — 

" Shut out from the diversified and busy .world, and shut in 
within the four walls of my lonely room, how can I quicken 
my pulses, how can I gain comfort and strength and cheer, 
so much as by converse with my beloved daughter ? The tie 
between father and daughter is one of peculiar sacredness. 
Tender and true is the bond where sympathies are one, where 
studies are similar, where the aims of the life are the same, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 133 



Thank God, these cords of affection and thought unite us 
together, and shall draw us more closely till we die." 

"West Springfield, Jan. 19, 1862. . 
" My Darling Emily, — Though we are separated by a hun- 
dred miles of space, may not our spirits meet and mingle in 
thoughts of God, and Christ, and heaven; in longings for 
holiness; in yearnings for the right and efficient fulfilment of 
duty? Have you had a pleasant and profitable Sabbath? I 
trust so. The mind makes its own place. It can make a 
heaven, where all around is dark ; it can make a place of dark- 
ness and woe, where all external circumstances are auspicious. 
I trust, my beloved, that your religious despondency is disap- 
pearing, and that you can say, ' I know that my Redeemer is 
mine, and that I am his.' I deem it an attainable state of 
Christian experience, to have assurance of faith. Built on an 
intelligent interpretation and acceptation of the Scriptures, it 
is a sign that stormy passions have been subdued, that wild 
excitements obey the helm, that the love of the soul is 
anchored in heaven, and that winds and waves and storm- 
clouds and gulf-streams, however adverse their influence may 
seem to be, are really bearing the spirit on to its celestial and 
ever-blessed harbor. Your life has had its trials, for one so 
young, more numerous and more severe than most. And yet, 
I believe that erelong you will see the wonderful love of God 
in them all, and will understand how adversity as well as pros- 
perity has been working out your highest and eternal happi- 
ness. You remember, in our ride from Hanover to Haverhill, 
N. H., summer before last, we p'assed one or two curvatures in 
the Connecticut River, with their majestic sweep. The course 
of the river is south ; and yet in those places it seems to be 
moving northerly, easterly, westerly, and to have no fixed 
determination. Yet the waters are all bearing on steadily to 
the south ; the ' great bend ' only gives additional beauty and 
fertilizing power to the stream, and allows more happy homes 
to line its banks. Thus is it with your Christian and intellec- 
tual life : it has its flexures and pauses and hinderances and 
bends, but it is bearing on to the ocean of God's celestial and 
illimitable love, and it shall have more richness, volume, 
beauty, power, on account of its interruptions." 

" West Springfield, Oct. 4, 1865. 
" My Beloved Emily, — I am lonely. Are you not glad? I 
wander about over my big and desolate house, seeking repose 
and cheerfulness, and finding none. I kindle a fire, first in the 



134 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER.. 



sitting-room ; second, in the northeast study ; third, in the 
dining-room ; fourth, in the north room below ; fifth, in Emily's 
room, — but they are all haunted with memories and vacant 
of faces ; they are all more smoky than they used to be, or else 
my eyes are dimmer. I go down to the farm, and get a basket 
of corn, and bring it home and husk it. I go out to the barn, 
and roll the carriage out, transpose a pile of corn, roll the car- 
riage in, and put the corn back again. I find that agriculture 
has lost a moiety of its charms. The potatoes are not so red, 
nor round, nor mealy; the corn is not so ripe, nor golden, nor 
big in the ear, as a few weeks ago. Newspapers are more dull, 
books are more prosy, trees are more scraggly, flowers are 
more begrimed with dust, skies are more foggy than formerly. 
Can you tell me of any antidote for this universal deteriora- 
tion ? 4 Home is home, be it ever so homely.' This is the old 
adage, — I dispute it. Home is not home because the house is 
wmole, and warm, and comfortable ; because the furniture is 
all there and uninjured ; because the trees are not chopped 
down, and the grass is not dried up, and the fences and land- 
marks are not removed ; because the cat and the chickens and 
the horse survive. Oh, no ! Something else is needed to make 
home. I sit solitary and sad, and long for the eyes and voices 
and the forms and the movements to which I have been accus- 
tomed; for the thoughts of the mind, and the sympathies of the 
heart, and the constant fellowship and aid, which have consti- 
tuted my happiness. Come back, O ye dear ones, to my home, 
and make it home ! Come back and fill the cheerless, aching 
solitude of my heart. Do you have now and then a ride in 
the country? And does the scenery seem to you beautiful? 
A. is quite in raptures over Andover landscapes. I am glad he 
is moved by them. We are educated insensibly by scenery. 
Freedom, independence, decision, high thoughts, are inspired 
by mountains. The gentler affections of sympathy, forbear- 
ance, and loving care dwell in the quiet, beautiful nooks and 
leafy glens of the valleys. Quick sensibilities, rugged, con- 
quering energies, simple and frugal virtues, great aims, are 
cultivated by the diversified and the lovely in nature. The 
city is necessary to put on the last touch of refinement and 
of art; but the sweet face of the world, the contrasts of 
mountain and valley, the limitless expanse of horizon, the fra- 
grance of flowers and fruits and grasses, the exuberant variety 
and exhaustless beauty of God's workmanship, the breezes 
sweeping full and free, are necessary not only for health, but 
for grandeur of soul and character. My own childhood and 
youth were spent in the midst of mountains, — Moose Mountain 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 135 



on the left, Lord's Hill on the right, each of them two miles 
away; Ascutney to the south, more grand and massive still, 
twenty miles distant ; and the whole range of the Green 
Mountains of Vermont, an unexampled panorama, stretching 
out in full view from the top of every elevation. At Henniker 
we and our children had more of the valley prospect. It was 
a basin amid the hills, with a quiet river gliding between, 
not so distinguished for rugged strength and sublimity as 
Hanover scenery, not so remarkable for fertility and beauty as 
the Connecticut valley. At Pelham, where two of my chil- 
dren were born, and two of them died too young to trace the 
finger of God in field or tree, but where you and A., as I well 
remember, used to cry out with exclamations of delight, if, in 
our occasional rides, a symmetrical prospect opened, — at Pel- 
ham we had more calm and uniform charm of scenery, but less 
variety and grandeur, less to awaken wonder. At Lowell, 
where precious Bela saw the light and shut his eyes to it again 
for all of time, we had the contrasts of hill and glen, of river 
and plain, of woods and cultivated field. Lowell scenery does 
not inspire surprise and agitation and power, so much as it 
does a well-balanced and perfect taste. This may be said of 
West Springfield also. In both places the goodness of God 
shines conspicuous, while the terror of His sky-piercing accliv- 
ities, and of His chasms, ravines, and deep abysses, must be 
learned from other spots." 

Dr. Foster was always bound up in his family. No man 
ever lived more for his household. As the years wore by, two 
events were coming to a culmination, both of intense interest 
to him. His only son, who had been followed with prayers 
and counsels and self-denying aid since the year 1859, 
when he went away from home to begin an eight years' 
course of study in fitting for the ministry, was now about 
finishing up that course and stepping forth into active life. 
Dr. Foster was singularly affected by this fact. He seemed to 
feel that he lived again in his son, and that his own work was 
nearly ended, now that his son was ready to enter the ministry. 
This idea is expressed in the playful and even pathetic fable 
with which the following letter closes. It may be said, in ex- 
planation of the fable, that it was suggested by the untimely 
end of a pet squirrel, named Skiouri, which his son had 
brought home from college. 



136 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

''December 5, 1864. 

" My Dear A , — We shall be most happy to see you as 

soon as you can possibly come, and to have you stay to 
the latest possible hour which health and pleasure demand, 
which study and duty permit. I shall be most happy to 
welcome you to my pulpit. The day when I first hear you 
preach will be an epoch of my life, long waited and prayed for, 
the result of many forecasting and anxious plans, of toilsome 
yet delightful labors, of marked yet cheerful privations. 
Some men of comprehensive calculation and great enterprise 
turn their faculties and strength into gold ; and if, at the age 
of fifty, they can retire from onerous responsibilities upon a 
hundred thousand dollars, and spend the remainder of their 
days in leisure, and study, and travel, and friendship, and 
recreation, and religious improvement, their life is counted a 
success. I refer not to the sordid miser, but to the large- 
minded and large-hearted man of energy, who accumulates 
wealth and uses it aright. I have not lived for money. Some 
great men transmute their talents into posthumous fame; 
some into office ; some into present popularity. I have not 
lived for any one of these objects. Some men, both great and 
good, adopt in their early life purposes of religious usefulness, 
and steadily and steadfastly they pursue that aim, — a deter- 
mination to win souls to Christ, and to reform the evils of a 
wicked world. I started with that purpose, but I long ago 
surrendered the hope of ever seeing, in this world, any con- 
siderable fulfilment of that plan. My early aspirations of 
scholarship were large ; they have been disappointed. My 
education in all departments has been a 'torso.' I was 
stopped from my purposes in college; I was set aside from 
the theological seminary ; I was broken off from teaching ; I 
have been brought repeatedly to a complete check in the min- 
istry. My health is a thing of fragments, and, to use Choate's 
comparison, I have been living for many years on the by-laws. 
For what, then, have Hived? I have lived for my children. 
They have been in my studies and my toils, in my affections 
and my anticipations, more than anything else in the world. 
If it had not been for my family, I should have been com- 
pelled to abandon my public efforts many years ago. My 
love for them and my hopes for them have inspired me and 
upheld me. Therefore I repeat, the hour that I first hear you 
preach will be an epoch in my life, and a thanksgiving in my 
heart. Come home and see us, and preach to us. 

"I have lately been reading the history of Skiouri. He was 
a good squirrel and of a respectable family, but I have a word 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 137 



or two to add to the autobiography. Skiouri lived on a high 
summit, where no clouds darkened his view, but bright sunshine 
lighted up his prospect ; where grandest scenery was all around 
him, and invigorating breezes constantly blew ; where nuts of 
richest meat and boundless abundance lay scattered at his feet; 
where he had nothing to do but to gather and store up in the 
nicest of all granaries all that he could eat, and all that his 
family and friends could eat for a life-time and an eternity; 
where a whole regiment of squirrels were constantly bringing 
him nuts of the fairest and most nutritious kind, and asking 
him to select for himself ; where the very elite of all furred 
animals were constantly cooking him nuts in the most 
recherche style, and holding them out on a silver plate before 
him. Thrice fortunate and happy Skiouri! Mr. Skiouri, the 
elder, lived at the foot of the cliff in a deep, narrow, dismal 
gorge. Mists and darkness were around him; stifled and 
miasmatic airs oppressed him. His right front foot was half 
paralyzed at the lower joint, and his left front foot was broken 
at the upper joint; he had been in other respects an enfeebled 
squirrel all his life. He had made a rash engagement to 
gather nuts for five hundred squirrels who had other cares to 
attend to. So he went limping 'round, in that barren and un- 
comfortable region, to gather what he could and as good as he 
could. Sometimes he tossed a nut up to the summit for his 
son, as a sign of love, not because he supposed the younger 
squirrel needed those shrunken articles ; he tossed them up 
with not a little effort and pain ; it was easy for Skiouri the 
younger to toss down any quantity of nuts. For a time he did 
toss them down in larger numbers than he received from 
below, and for this the old cripple was truly grateful. At last 
the darkness began to gather into midnight blackness with 
Mr.. Skiouri, the elder. Nuts were scarce; his labors were 
severe; his strength gave way; heart and hope failed him; 
the five hundred squirrels for whom he toiled began to think 
that the nuts he brought them were cracked, half the meat 
gone, and the rest of it mouldy. Young Skiouri, on the 
mountain, complained because the father did not toss up more 
and better nuts. Mrs. Skiouri and Bunny, the elder daughter, 
departed to a beautiful hill-side to dwell, and left Mr. Skiouri 
alone. After an absence of months, the whole family returned, 
but Mr. Skiouri they never saw more. They inquired of the 
five hundred squirrels : they knew nothing of his fate ; they 
only knew that they had revoked the contract of nuts to be 
supplied on the one hand, and material comforts to be sup- 
plied on the other. The whole vicinage of squirrels went 

10 



138 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER 



about and made search. They traced him to a gloomy cave 
in the bosom of the steep declivity, from which no track went 
outward. The atmosphere of the cave was pestilential, its 
windings were labyrinthine, its depths were fathomless ; the 
searchers only knew that the aged, and crippled, and despair- 
ing, and hapless Skiouri had entered there . and was lost. 
Adieu, beloved, and God's blessings ever abide with you. 
Your father." 

The other event, "which moved him far more powerfully, 
and undoubtedly broke up his pastorate in West Springfield, 
was the death of his beloved daughter Emily, in her twenty- 
third year. For a long time she had been in failing health. 
Everything that agonized parents could do, was done, but it 
was all in vain; the beautiful form grew pale, and wasted 
away, while the more beautiful soul ripened into unusual bril- 
liancy of thought and spirituality of feeling. During her long 
condition of invalidism, Dr. Foster wrote thus to her physi- 
cian, in whose family Emily had remained for months together 
for treatment. 

" My Dear Dr. Garland, — I used to read, when young, of 
the devoted attachment which was likely to spring up between 
large-hearted physicians and the families of their patients. I 
think I can now understand experimentally, and ' ex imo cordi,' 
what I used to think about, as a possible theory. Your gener- 
osity to my departed brother Edward, and your tender care of 
my child, and the gentle attentions and blessed social influences 
which your family have thrown around her, touch me most 
profoundly. May God reward you ! May health and happi- 
ness and salvation be the abiding inmates of your home ! Mrs. 
F. joins me in grateful and affectionate regards." 

But no medical skill, and no self-denying, devoted parental 
care, could stay the progress of disease, and at last, Dec. 30, 
1865, the cherished daughter passed away. The following 
touching letter will show how completely crushed was the 
heart-broken father : — 

" Sometimes I think I am not reconciled to the loss of my 
fondly-loved Emily.* The sense of utter vacancy and loneli- 
ness increases upon me. God has given me six children, full 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 139 



of promise and loveliness; and at the age of fifty-two, with 
infirmities gathering upon me, a dense and impervious cloud, I 
wander about in my empty house, and find only one of the six 
— a little girl, whose education and character are yet to be 
gained — remaining to cheer me in my depression and aid me 
in my toils. You, my tenderly beloved son, my companion, 
my friend, even more than my child, are left to me ; but our 
professional labors will henceforth place us apart, and our 
communion must mainly be by the imperfect method of cor- 
respondence. We are alone. The sense of weakness and inad- 
equacy, the heavy weight of apprehension, the feeling that we 
have none to lean upon in our isolation, and that we shall soon 
totter and fall, oppress me with an awful distress. Last autumn 
we were alone just as we are now, but I was sustained by the 
daily hope that Emily would soon be with us again. Now that 
hope is departed. Like the Hebrews described in Deuteron- 
omy, when their sons and their daughters were carried into 
captivity, 'Mine eyes look, and fail with their longing for her 
all the day long ; there is no might in my hand.' And yet, 
why speak I thus ? She has not gone into captivity, but into 
enfranchisement ; she is not groaning under the cruel lash of 
exacting task-masters, but is rejoicing in the light and love of 
her Saviour's countenance; she is not an exile nor a wanderer, 
but has at last reached her home. She has put off the infir- 
mities of the flesh; she has broken away from the chains of 
darkness, sickness, and imperfection ; she has put on the robes 
of her Saviour's righteousness ; she has taken the wings of 
the morning, and dwells in the region of light and health and 
purity and rapture. The presence of this dear child was an 
exhilaration to me all the time, more than meat or wine, more 
than garden or flowers, more than the scenery of mountain 
or glen or lake, more than books or general society. She 
suited me ; her vivacity kept my mind alert ; her originality 
of thought stimulated my curiosity; her rapid and accurate 
intuitions often threw unexpected light upon my perplexities ; 
her joyous, hopeful temperament, which was her prevailing 
state of mind, tended to banish my despondencies; her occa- 
sional anxieties, which were profound, showed how suscep- 
tible she was to all influences, whether of grief or gladness, 
whether of fear or hope, whether of darkness or light, and 
touched me in a thousand points with sympathy and quicken- 
ing and solace. Her perfect refinement of thought and taste 
lifted my own thoughts up into a region of purity and delicacy. 
Her countenance and form and attitudes and lanouao-e and 
topics of conversation, all gratified my sense of beauty, all 



140 MEMORIAL OF REV, DR, E. B. FOSTER. 



gave a new spring for my longings for spirituality and the 
higher perfection. Her gratitude to God for mercies ; her ten- 
dency, in all our walks and rides and talks, to see the hand of 
God in objects surrounding and in events transpiring; her 
invariable convictions of personal unworthiness, and her tena- 
cious though trembling clinging to the cross of Jesus, — all 
inspired and strengthened my faith. She counselled me in 
difficulty, she soothed me in sorrow, she guided me in dark- 
ness, she aided me in toils, she etherealized my meditations, she 
purged away my dross, she exalted my aims. Darling, precious, 
sainted Emily ! How can I live without her ? May I not take 
comfort in the assurance that I shall see her again, where part- 
ings no more shall come ? I shall look upon her countenance, 
radiant with intelligence, purity, love, and joy. I shall behold 
her form, and all that constitutes her personality, forever beau- 
tiful, youthful, healthful, enduring, efficient. She shall lean 
upon my arm, and walk by my side, not with the feeble step of 
the invalid, but with the elastic spring of the angel. She shall 
sit by my side, bound to me by ties of heavenly affinity, and 
loving to be near me. She shall rehearse to me her remem- 
brances of earth and her experiences of heaven, and, as the 
elder-born spirit of light, shall lead me up to seraphic heights 
of knowledge and divine communion. She shall tell me all 
that she has learned of the mysteries and glories of the divine 
government, of the marvels of Jesus' grace, and the attractions 
of the heavenly service. She shall be my teacher, far more 
than I have ever been hers. All this as my joy and my reward 
will Christ vouchsafe to me hereafter, if I lean upon his cross 
and wait, with holy obedience and holy trust, for his appearing. 
Pray for me, that I may be enabled so to do." 

After this the charm was gone from West Springfield. No 
longer could either the father or the mother endure the asso- 
ciations of the parsonage where their dear daughter had 
sickened and died ; its loneliness was insupportable. Dr. Fos- 
ter's health was much impaired by his grief. He became almost 
heart-broken ; his work in West Springfield seemed to him, in 
this clouded state of his mind, unsuccessful, and he believed 
himself unfitted for the place. At this juncture there came to 
him an invitation to return to his old charge in Lowell. Feel- 
ing that a change of scene would be beneficial, recognizing the 
large usefulness possible to him as pastor of the John-street 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 141 

Church, and attracted by the dear and cherished memories 
which thronged upon him, he accepted the call. Accordingly, 
although parting with deep regret from a people whom he loved 
and who loved him, he resigned his position in West Spring- 
field, and was dismissed April 17, 186G. His feelings at the 
time are indicated in a letter written some months after to a 
friend in West Springfield. 

"We have left behind, in West Springfield, friends as dear 
to us as any whom God has ever given us, — of Christian devo- 
tion, of intellectual culture, of sympathetic, genial, generous 
spirits. The town is full of mementos of our dear, departed 
daughter, full of suggestions of delightful ministerial labor, of 
precious personal friendships. I shall never find another 
locality which binds me by the charms of the scenery, by the 
comforts of the home, by the tender sympathies of Christian 
association, any more closely. I shall invoke blessings as long 
as I live, with all the warmth of earnest prayer, upon the 
venerable head of your father, upon the souls and the families 
of your brothers, from all of whom I received such constant, 
appropriate, whole-souled co-operation in my ministerial work. 
Their opportune and fervent supplications; their instructive, 
impressive remarks in religious meetings; their kind and sus- 
taining encouragement, rendered to me personally; their 
uniform spirit of consecration to Christ; their bright and con- 
sistent example ; their readiness for every good word and 
work, — will never be forgotten by me. I do not single them 
out as exhibiting any peculiar fidelity. I speak of them espe- 
cially because writing to the daughter and sister. I have the 
same admiring and grateful recollections for all the people. I 
was depressed by a lack of results in gathering souls into the 
church. I became satisfied that another minister could do 
more good in that field than I could. It was no consideration 
of personal comfort, or ease, or happiness, that led me to de- 
sire a change. One sole, intense, undying longing for the 
conversion of souls led me to the step I took." 

One of his parishioners, J. Newton Bagg, Esq., has thus 
reviewed his work during this pastorate: — 

" His presence was an inspiration. Reverence, dignity, sim- 
plicity, tenderness, deep thoughtfulness, humility, were the 
characteristics which most impressed me. He was here five 
years, and filled the pulpit with great acceptance. I remem* 



142 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



ber his great loyalty. He made several addresses on the war, 
that thrilled the young men and caused many to enlist in the 
Tenth, Twenty-sixth, and other regiments. He preached ser- 
mons on the war, and he had at his tongue's end the position 
of the various forces in the field. He studied the papers, and 
with maps and pins, in his study, he located many of the regi- 
ments. It used' to be said that Dr. Foster knew every move- 
ment of the army, and anticipated every march. He had con- 
fidence in the generals, and no one rejoiced more heartily than 
he over the successes of Grant. He preached a series of ser- 
mons to young men, and another to young women, that were 
full of strength and beauty, and were very popular. A 
favorite gesture was the shaking of a finger, and when it began 
we were seldom disappointed with his eloquence. He was 
rapid in thought and speech, and the more rapid, the higher 
the excitement of his auditors. I have clutched the seat in- 
voluntarily when he seemed to be running away with us ; but 
always found his speed invigorating. He complained, some- 
times, that he could not sleep, and used to dig in his garden, 
and saw wood with all his might, for physical exercise. At 
the time he dislocated his shoulder, falling over a saw-horse, 
he said to one of his deacons, 'I think that this is providen- 
tial, and that I am to be laid aside.' The deacon saw his 
opportunity, and replied : ' It seems to me that this Providence 
points to a new saw-horse, and I shall order one.' The spell 
was broken, and there was hearty laughter on both sides." 



VIII. — Second Pastorate in Lowell, Mass. 

1866 — 1878. 

It is a very unusual thing for a pastor to return to a former 
charge. Whenever it is done, it speaks well for both pastor 
and people. It gives the best of evidence that the past life of 
each was creditable. We may justly draw such a conclusion 
from Dr. Foster's return to Lowell. He and the people of 
John-street Church knew each other well, and were glad to be 
reunited ; and the resumption of the pastorate proved to be a 
source of happiness and privilege to both. Installed May 16, 
1866, Dr. Foster at once fell into the old paths, almost as if 
there had not been an interregnum of four years and five 
months. 




JOHN-STREET CHURCH AS IT WAS IN 1840. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 143 

The first two years of this j:>astorate were marked by another 
unusual experience. His son, in 1866, was settled over the 
Appleton-street (now Eliot) Congregational Church in Lowell, 
and side by side father and son carried on their work and took 
sweet counsel together. These were most happy years to Dr. 
Foster. Saddened indeed by previous trials, he yet, in the 
circumstances which now surrounded him, — the society .of 
former friends, the stimulus of the city, the wide opportu- 
nities of usefulness, the companionship of a son whom he 
loved to treat rather as a brother, — maintained himself in an 
unusually cheerful frame of mind. But, in 1868, two events 
occurred which seriously affected for a time the equanimity of 
his mind, — his father died, and his son, in broken health, gave 
up his pastorate in the city. 

No one who has not lost a father, on whom he has long 
leaned for strength, and to whom he has constantly gone for 
sympathy and counsel, can understand the shock which one 
feels when he realizes that he now stands at the head of the 
column in the march of life, and must take the whole respon- 
sibility in the advance. He had been accustomed to refer 
many difficult questions to a father's judgment, or, at least, 
had felt that there was one before him in the line of genera- 
tions to whom he could go for sympathy. To be sure, Dr. 
Foster was now fifty-five years of age, and abundantly able 
to decide all questions for himself; but his father had been a 
man of intelligence and independent mind, and had sympa- 
thized in his son's work and lines of thought. Dr. Foster 
had ever been a most faithful son, always glad to give his 
father a home in his house, writing to him with loving fre- 
quency, and treating him with most filial deference. When 
death came to the aged man, though not unanticipated and 
confessedly desirable for one who left an earth of pain for a 
heaven of triumph, it yet was a shock and to some degree a 
discouragement to the sensitive mind of Dr. Foster. To this 
sorrow was added a peculiar disappointment and anxiety, 
when his own son, with health gone, was compelled to resign 
his charge in Lowell, and for two years remained unable to 



144 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

do pastoral work. Certain letters of this period, of a miscel- 
laneous character, may be here inserted. 

The first is an invitation to an old college classmate and 
dear friend to visit him at his house. It happily illustrates 
his familiarity and interest in every living topic of the day. 

"Lowell, May 4, 1868. 

" My Dear Friend, — It will give me very great pleasure to 
see you on your journey to Boston. Please come and spend 
just as long a vacation of rest with us as you can afford, — 
talking over old memories ; roaming about the city and suburbs ; 
reviewing, in the abandon of the careless hour, books and 
things aud histories and men. Andrew Johnson and his vaga- 
ries, impeachment and its salient points, Congress and its dif- 
ficulties, General Grant and his prospects, Bancroft and his 
mixture of past annals and present politics, Motley and his 
overthrow by McCracken, the English Parliament and the 
Irish problem, Italy and the coining Pope, the methods of edu- 
cation in the land, the systems of philosophy in vogue, the 
reform of drunkenness and other vices, are topics now filling 
the air both with idle prattle and with solemn words, about 
which I should like to ask your opinion. I cannot canvass any 
one of these themes on paper. The field of discussion is too 
broad, my time is too much crowded with official work, and 
my pen has too limping a gait." 

The second was written in his summer vacation. 

"York, Me., Aug. 26, 1868. 

" Dear Brother D , — My sport in this ancient city of 

York has been moderate. Old ocean is as big as ever he was, 
and thunders away on the shore his eternal anthem of praise to 
God, striking the deep chords of sub-bass in the storm, and 
singing the gentle lullabies of music in the calm sunshine. I 
never tire of the sublimity of his awakening roar, or of the 
beauty of his milder whispers. I stand on the rock-bound coast, 
and fish; I walk by the surf-washed shore, and muse; I sit on 
some conspicuous headland, and gaze abroad ; I look out on 
the white-winged ships, floating by under an unseen propulsion ; 
I mark the egg-shell boats, tossing on the breast of huge waves ; 
I try in vain, either with naked eye or magnifying glass, to 
penetrate the haze of the distant horizon ; I seek to compre- 
hend the power that keeps this immeasurable sea in motion ; 
I meditate upon all this mystery and marvel, and the sea 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 145 



shouts — 'God.' I ponder upon the changes and uncertainties 
and dangers of the sea ; I look out upon the spot, less than 
half a mile from the point of land where I so often fish, where, 
two weeks ago, Capt. John Fisher, of Newburyport, out in his 
two-masted little schooner, fishing alone, was struck by a sud- 
den flaw of wind, and went down, to rise no more ; and again 
the sea thunders — ' Duty.'. The amusements of the sea exhil- 
arate my mind. I hardly know what the abiding effect will 
be on my health. Yesterday, A. and I took our little sail-boat 
(the same that you saw last year), and went out alone two 
miles from shore. It was a warm, calm, beautiful day, the 
ocean smooth as glass. We fished four hours, and came in 
wafted by the sail. We caught eight codfish and twenty din- 
ners, the codfish weighing thirty pounds, and the cunners ten 
pounds. We had a good time. I have been out on Goose 
Pond a half-dozen times, starting before light in the morning, 
and returning after dark at night, and the result of the six 
expeditions would not equal so many pounds of fish, nor so 
many quintals of genuine fun, as we secured yesterday after 
four hours' work, or rather play. I get very tired, and fish a 
good deal in the darkness of night and on dry land, as well as 
in the sunlight and on the ocean. I am out of the whirl of 
politics and news, and of trade, and of intrigue, and of metro- 
politan confusion. I almost forget whether it was Grant or 
Chase, or Seymour or Vallandigham, that was nominated for 
the Presidency." 

The third is to his son while seeking health in the West. 

"December 12, 1868. 

" My Beloved A , — I turn aside from my sermon, which 

I have been pushing all the week, on the ' Duty of Parents to 
the Sabbath-school' (from Ex. 10 : 9), written by request, to 
hold a little conversation with you. It seems a long time 
since we have seen you, and we wish to get frequent pictures 
of your mind and heart and life. It seems very sad to us, that 
the opportunity of daily communion with our dear first-born 
child should now be ended, j)i*obably never again to be re- 
sumed. For twenty-seven years have we enjoyed it, with 
short collegiate intervals. Very precious has it been to us, 
comforting to our bereaved hearts, strengthening to our feeble 
hands, reviving to our hopes, helpful to our plans. We must 
submit ; we must see the hand of God ; we must ponder upon 
the compensations. The old eagles push out the young ones 
from the nest, to teach them to fly. We have not pushed you 



146 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



out. You have taken a western flight, perhaps a distant one. 
Well, God be with you, my children. It is the appointment 
of Providence, doubtless for your best welfare and highest 
usefulness ; nevertheless, our hearts are very sad at the part- 
ing. We can only comfort our disconsolate minds with antic- 
ipations of future happy results. You are in the hands of a 
better Guardian than we. I recur to the eagle's nest. 'As an 
eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth 
abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so 
the Lord will lead you.' We have sought to be protecting and 
guiding eagles, so far as we could. Our love has been true, 
our anxieties have been constant. It is well that you have a 
better Helper. 

" I have not been reading much for months, and do not know 
when I shall have time again to dive into the library alcoves. 
I thirst, with an inextinguishable desire, for a succession of 
books on religious philosophy. Porter, Mahan, Fisher, Hurst, 
Hagenbach, even Mill, Lecky, and Spencer, on Positivism and 
Rationalism, I wish to read ; but I doubt whether I shall ever 
get the time." 

The fourth letter shows the intimate connection, which was 
ever Dr. Foster's characteristic, between his mental and phys- 
ical condition. The life-long struggle between a resolution 
to work and impaired health was becoming more and more 
intense. This letter bears marks of the terrible conflict. 

"It is the anniversary of Emily's death. May God heal my 
wounds ; they bleed afresh. May God guide my steps, lest I 
faint and fall. Since my father died, my nervous system has 
been wholly prostrate, and time does not seem to mend the 
disorder. Pains in my wrist, twinges in my back, spasms in 
my ankles, soreness in my teeth and jaws that makes it almost 
impossible to eat solid food, tossings of restlessness, and hor- 
rors of dreams in my night hours, afflict me continually. In 
the day-time I can get no relief on the pavements. My only 
recipe from harrowing thoughts and foreboding fears is to 
plunge into sermon-writing, and follow it from morn to mid- 
night, with all the intensity of which I am capable I get my 
mind engrossed, my heart interested, my soul relieved for a 
little time, of its insufferable burdens, thus and thus only. 

" I went last night with your mother to a wedding-party at 

. A great and richly-furnished house ; a complete jam of 

people ; silk dresses, with a mile of train, and a camel's hump 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 147 

of panniers, and an amazing quantity of bare shoulders, $6,000 
worth of presents to the wedded pair, many grandees present, 

Hon. one of the guests (with whom I had an interesting 

conversation), a dance far into the night, our exit at ten 
o'clock, with memories of costly dresses and jewels and fur- 
belows and bright eyes and imposing forms crowding upon 
our bewildered thoughts all night, constitute the confused 
recollections. Pardon, therefore, my abrupt close, and accept 
for yourself and H. my love and prayers, constant, fervent, 
undying." 

In 1869, Dr. Foster bought a house, pleasantly located in 
the suburbs of Lowell. The purchase of a house is usually 
considered a doubtful experiment for a minister, but in this 
case it was no mistake. It secured a delightful home, free 
from all the annoyances of a rented house. It gave a stimulus 
and direction to efforts to save something for a time of greater 
need. It proved, in course of years, to be the chief reliance 
for support in a time of age and infirmity. With reference to 
this purchase, Dr. Foster writes in this happy vein : — 

"June 14, 1869. 

"We have bought a house and garden. Your mother 
wishes to have an eye on the growing sprouts and the finishing 
rooms, as the garden is now in process of vegetation, and the 
house is now in the process of building. The place is in Cen- 
tralville. The garden has 11,000 feet of land. The house has 
six chambers on the second floor, no one of them cramped, 
and below four rooms, the parlor extending across the whole 
end of the house. Entrance at the side of the house from a 
piazza. The plan of the house was devised by your mother. 
Why was her talent thrown away upon this poor dust, lean in 
purse, barren in invention, feeble in enterprise, who can give 
her a chance to build only one house ? Price of the house and 

land, $ ; means of payment, in the outer limbo of dreams; 

time of occupancy, first of September; chief crop, growing 
this summer, cucumbers, out of which sunshine is to be made 
largely ; number of pear trees, four ; apple trees, six ; cherry 
trees, two ; grape-vines, ten ; flower bushes, one ; pear trees in 
prospect, nine hundred and ninety-nine ; view from the cham- 
ber windows, Monadnock, lighted mills of Lowell, large and 
verdant sections of Dracut. We have a chamber on the wall^ 
with an east window and a south, morning sunlight and noon- 



148 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



day warmth, with blessed visions such as Christian saw from 
the Beautiful Palace, designed and joyfully set apart for a 
young prophet and prophetess named A. and H. Come, my 
beloved, over the hills and over the valleys, like the bounding 
roe, and occupy your rest. 

"I have but little time to write, or I would tell of the 
beauty and comfort, of the pure air and delightful scenery, of 
the stillness and retirement, of the prospective joy of our new 
home. I think I shall build an altar and an idol, and bow 

down in reverence before for raising the rent on us and 

driving us out of his house." 



This year was marked by much hard work. A series of 
sermons on "The Christian Home" was prepared and 
preached. Some of the topics under this series were, " Give 
attendance to reading," "Rules of business success," "Divine 
appointment of the family," " Eules for happy marriages." 
The following letter gives an idea of the way he devoted him- 
self to study in preparation for his pulpit work. 

" I have had hardly an hour of leisure for reading for more 
than a month. My last serious attempt was to grapple with some 
of the Emersonian, materialistic sophistries. I piled around 
me all my metaphysical books, — Hamilton, Morell, Princeton 
Essays, Rogers, Buchanan, Hopkins, Shedd's Christian Doc- 
trines, Bushnell, and for six days I read and took notes, and 
laid out heads of discourse, and pondered on difficulties, till 
my brain snapped again. My feeble health and my increasing 
pressure of pastoral duties stopped me in mid-career, and I 
have not been able to write out my thoughts. I have been 
very anxious to discuss with you this topic, — ' Our Intellectual 
Dependence upon other Men's Writings,' in view of what you 

wrote about Mr. . But I have no time now. Yesterday, 

in the morning, I preached on the 'Importance of Making a 
Profession of Religion ' ; in the afternoon, on the ' Great Sal- 
vation.' I. What does it imply? — 1, Freedom from the love 
of sin ; 2, Freedom from the curse of sin. II. Its source and 
means, — 1, God's eternal love ; 2, Death of Christ ; 3, Power 
of Holy Ghost ; 4, Wonderfulness of divine authority ; 5, In- 
fluence of affliction ; 6, Influence of ordinances. III. Its 
practical results, — 1, Humility; 2, Self-renunciation ; 3, Holy 
confidence," 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 149 

The subjoined letter opens with a paragraph which shows 
how the work sometimes accumulated almost beyond the possi- 
bility of performance. The paragraphs which follow have an 
interest of their own. 

"Lowell, Nov. 5, 1869. 

"My Beloved A , — My head has been pushed till it is 

near the point of spontaneous combustion, like the wheel of a 
locomotive under a drive. A sermon before the An clover Con- 
ference three weeks ago ; a sermon in Huntington Hall two 
weeks ago, to inaugurate a series before the Y. M. C. Associa- 
tion ; a sermon to the young men of my own congregation 
last Sunday; three new sermons for preparatory lecture, and 
for the Sabbath, this week, — these have kept me on the most 
eager stretch. The Young Men's Convention was a marked 
success ; one of the most blessed meetings I ever attended. I 
believe that laymen make a more solemn, awakening, and profit- 
able meeting of this kind, than ministers. They are practical, 
direct, experimental, searching in address to conscience, pa- 
thetic in appeals to feeling, full of fact and illustration, aiming 
at results in conversion and the accomplishment of work. Min- 
isters are too scholastic and metaphysical for these short and 
inspiring addresses, and these home-thrusts which lead at once 
to action. I heard some thirty laymen speak, nearly all of 
them to the point, earnest, vivid, fluent, crowded with thought, 
and with evident desire for the salvation of souls. I heard 
some six or eight ministers, all of them able. But three other 
men, General Howard, Senator Wilson, and Burnell of Wis- 
consin, gave the chief attraction to the meeting. Burnell is 
wonderful for heavenly-mind edn ess, pathos, and natural, easy, 
colloquial speech. Wilson is full of calm common-sense, and 
of thoughtful, refined, experimental power. General Howard 
is more intense than either, more broad and scholarly in his 
arguments, equally practical, direct, arousing, convincing. I 
like him amazingly. The meeting was a grand convocation of 
holy, working men. 

" Our honored State of Massachusetts has once more turned 
a somerset and come up free rum. Argument is useless, moral 
suasion is powerless, love and importunity and tears are vain, 
until the awful experiment of inebriety and ruin has been fully 
tried. It seems that every generation must try it for itself. 
Forty years ago, Dr. Beecher, Dr. Hewitt, Dr. Edwards, and 
many high-minded laymen, brought in a temperance reforma- 
tion. The children and youth, the young men and young 



150 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

women of our day, know nothing of the horrors of rum-drink- 
ing. They must learn the lesson for themselves. They are 
beginning to learn it. . . . Oh, that there might be some 
law to hold back the tempters and destroyers of youth, who 
are remorseless in their avarice, cruel as the grave, terrible as 
hell!" 

In the year 1869, Rev. Mr. Earle, the evangelist, preached 
in the city. Much religious interest followed. Dr. Foster 
wrote of the work thus : — 

" Three persons are propounded to join John-street Church 
by profession next communion. Our evening meetings are 
much increased, and our Sabbath services are very solemn ; 
large numbers of individuals, I believe, are greatly thoughtful 
as to salvation, if not profoundly convicted. I know not what 
hinders them from immediate decision. If I am the Jonah that 
keeps the ship from coming to shore, would that I had never 
undertaken to sail in the ministerial boat, or otherwise, that 
some whale would now carry me to some far-distant and se- 
cluded island of the sea. I am troubled by some of the results 
of Mr. Earle's preaching here, but still hope for the best. Our 
honored Baptist ministers are preaching the necessity and indis- 
pensableness of a form. Some new converts, awakened out of 
an old profession, immersed when first they joined an Evangel- 
ical church, were re-plunged last Sabbath. Some of my own 
young professors of religion are thrown into doubts on the ques- 
tion of baptism. Mr. B. came to me last week to inquire after 
treatises on baptism for the satisfaction of some perplexed 
members of Appleton-street Church. I have not preached a 
word on baptism for twenty years. I do not know but I ought 
to be immersed — in the controversy. 

" We have some thirty individuals in our congregation who 
are indulging a hope in Christ, and who ought to make a pro- 
fession of religion. The result of Mr. Earle's evangelistic 
labors in this city, is the accession of some forty to each of the 
Baptist churches, a good deal of sectarian preaching, as I hear, 
from Baptist pulpits on the specialty of immersion, some ve- 
hement controversial sermons by Universalist ministers against 
the doctrine of the ' unpardonable sin,' etc., a general stampede 
from our churches to Baptist congregations on communion 
Sabbaths to see — what is to be seen ; some dissatisfaction on 
the part of very thoughtful minds, and, I trust, some awaken- 
ing on the part of careless minds. When the day of inquisi- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 151 

tion shall come, and the tares and the wheat shall no longer 
grow together, and all consequences shall be known, I am 
doubtful whether, in the system of Evangelism, the evil or the 
good will be found to predominate. My mind is left in a state 
of painful uncertainty and anxiety." 

.Dr. Foster was a passionate lover of nature. The moun- 
tains, the sea, the woods, and the flowers, the rushing stream, 
the placid lake, all interested him exceedingly. Like most 
ministers, he was also an enthusiastic fisherman. The follow- 
ing letters, written in the summer of 1869, from York, Me., 
where he spent his vacation with his children, illustrate these 
peculiarities. 

"York, Me., Aug. 24, 1869. 

" My Beloved N- , — I have been wandering on the 

smooth beach, by the side of the unfathomable, incompre- 
hensible sea. Of this sight I never, grow weary. These 
sounds are never dull nor unmusical in my ear. I spent two 
hours on the beach last Sabbath morning, from eight o'clock 
till ten. My soul was filled with a sense of the omnipresence, 
the omnipotence, the infinite love of God. The vastness and 
the majesty of the ocean well-nigh overpower me. The mys- 
tery and the wonders of the ocean subdue me with awe. I 
stood last Sabbath in the portico of that mighty temple ; I 
gazed, far out as my eye would reach, upon the narrow edge 
of the boundless expanse, the waves rippling in the tireless 
play of the deep and shimmering in the morning sunlight ; I 
saw the mystic lift of the adorable Hand ; I heard the divine 
touch of the foamy fingers on that organ of ten thousand 
stops. It is music such as exalts the soul and refines it and 
entrances it beyond any earthborn melody. Some go to the 
beach to play croquet; some to dive into the plunging surge; 
some to shoot sand-peeps; some to drive fast horses on nature's 
macadamized road. But to me the beach is ever a preacher 
of God, and the sermon is of His power and of His wisdom 
and of His sleepless guardianship and inexhaustible grace. 

" The day after I received Mr. Brooks's bait, I made my 
greatest haul, eighty-five fish. Thanks to his somewhat singu- 
lar generosity, for I doubt whether a box of worms was ever 
forwarded by express before. Yesterday I went out upon the 
ocean with Captain Young, and caught twenty-eight fish : four 
hake, big fellows; one sea-flounder, equal to halibut for rich- 



152 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



ness ; ten cod, thirteen haddock. It was a day of great sport, 
and I feel pretty thoroughly tired. A. and H. are out to-day 
in their sail-boat, skirting up and down the river, pausing by 
this meadow to catch a butterfly ; by the side of this sea-grass, 
to catch a fish; off in the grove, to catch a flower; moving in 
the quiet stream, to catch a sail; resting in the eddy, to catch 
a secret conversation and a few smiles of love. Mr. Clark sits 
in the parlor, reading a book ; I sit in my unostentatious attic, 
writing to my darling daughter, treasure of my heart, sunshine 
of my home, hope of my declining age. 

"You say that in our new house my study is 'splendid,' 
your room is 'pretty,' our room is 'indifferent.' That is 
the order in which I would have the delights come. Splen- 
dor — if we have splendor at all — for company; beauty ever 
hovering near and everywhere diffused around our beloved 
daughter; comfort without show in the parents' chamber. 
I am very anxious that your chamber should be attrac- 
tive. You will spend time in it for study, time in it for 
prayer, time in it for rest and solitary musing. I hope it will 
be to you, not simply convenient and healthful, but a place of 
elevating thought, a place of joy, where the soul will find 
fitting emblem of the heavenly mansions and the heavenly 
fellowship." 

"My Dear Wife, — I have been pursuing the frivolous pleas- 
ures of the place and of the hour pretty severely. I have found 
what the drunkard so eagerly desired, when he wished that 
his throat was greatly elongated. I have found pleasure that 
can be measured by the foot. Every codfish that I catch gives 
me a thrill, mingled with expectation, uncertainty, victory, 
doubt, delight, sixty feet long. I have caught to-day twenty- 
three cod and haddock, making thirteen hundred and eighty 
feet of joy. I hooked six others, three of them floundering 
big ones, and lost them, making three hundred and sixty feet 
of keen disappointment — almost as bad as it would be to drink 
some of the adulterated liquors. On the whole, I mark the 
day with a white stone. I went out with Caj^tain Young, and 
had the biggest gift of fishing that I ever had in my life. I 
took breakfast before the rest of the family, and dinner on the 
ocean, so you will understand that I have had a double share 
of happiness for one day. If I had had an ocean made at 
my door, and been permitted to fish all my life, I think 1 
should have been almost as happy as Mr. Murray in the Adi- 
rondacks. I do not expect to shoot a loon; I do not expect 
to hang on to the tail of a wounded deer; I do not expect to 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 153 



shut my eyes and go down some unknown cataract ; I do not 
expect to discover any phantoms dancing in the moonlight 
or the sunlight; I do not expect to ride with a mad horse in 
a bolted car ; but, bating these small items, I think I am as 
well off for fun as the veracious and reverend Mr. Murray. 

" Mr. Brooks arrived safe and sound at one o'clock, just, as 
we were sitting down to dinner. I am exceedingly glad to 
see him. I find company in the ocean waves, company in the 
singing breezes, company in the music of memories, company 
in the softly-going footsteps of hope, company in fishes when 
they do not hide themselves too persistently under the sea; 
still I am obliged to confess it is rather lonesome. I doubt 
whether Mr. Brooks will enjoy fishing as I do. If he does, 
there is plenty of fun in store for him. The tumble of the 
waves, the ragged rocks, the beautiful grove, the desolate island, 
the quiet harbor, the rocking boats, the flitting ships, the shy 
fish, the still old town, the sluggish river rising and failing with 
the tide, are still all here. 

"I witnessed, yesterday afternoon, at five o'clock, a com- 
bination of natural scenery, novel, wonderful, and instructive. 
The great eclipse of the sun was on, which I suppose you saw; 
but you could not see it under all the advantages of the sea- 
bound coast. Most of the day had been thick with clouds and 
wet with showers, until the eclipse began to appear, when the 
clouds all broke from the west and rolled back in a dense 
column upon the north. On the one side was the fathomless 
and illimitable ocean, ever restless in its action, never ceasing 
the musical notes of its wide diapason, sign of the omnipres- 
ence and the almightiness of God and of the mystery of his 
dealings. Eight miles to the north was Mount Agamenticus, 
rearing its towering front, sign of the sublimity of God's 
thought. Under the western sunshine was the valley of .the 
York River, in the deep green and the surpassing beauty of the 
present summer, showing the wonderful finish and perfection 
of God's workmanship. All around were the rolling fields in 
their fertility, and the sombre groves with their bird-songs, 
emblems of God's infinite love. Then the sunshine, token of 
the dazzling and ineffable brightness of God's wisdom. Then 
the dark, dense bank of cloud, reminding the thoughtful 
observer of the judgments of God, hidden for a time. Then 
the eclipse, like the afflictions of our earthly lot, which hide, 
or partially hide, from our dim and finite sight the radiance of 
God's wisdom and love. At that moment, when the eclipse 
was encroaching constantly upon the sun, there came out upon 
the northeastern sky a vivid and beautiful rainbow, one of the 
11 



154 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



most distinct I ever saw, blessed type of the mercy of our 
Redeemer, compensation for all the darkness of the eclipse, 
for all the terrors of the cloud, for all the mystery of the sea, 
for all the hidings of beauty and riches in the valley and the 
river and the forest and the field. That singular conjunction 
of sea and mountain, of valley and woods, of gentle river and 
threatening cloud, of ominous eclipse and hope-inspiring rain- 
bow, I shall not soon forget. So God mingles our life full of 
the tokens of his displeasure and the tokens of his grace. 
The earth, in all its histories and through all its centuries, is 
made profoundly sad by the sufferings of sin; is made more 
memorably bright by the redemptive love of Jesus." 

Even in vacation he enjoyed thought and study such as he 
ordinarily gave to his sermons. Novels were, except to a 
very limited extent, distasteful to him. When seeking perfect 
rest he could not deny himself the pleasure of theological 
reading. After such occupation he wrote this paragraph of 
criticism : — ■ 

" I have been reading three Baccalaureate sermons : one on 
'Perfect Love,' by Dr. Mark Hopkins;* one on 'The Bible,' 
by Dr. N". Lord; f and one on the 'Imagination,' by Dr. A. D. 
Smith.f Dr. Lord is philosophic, mystical, erratic. Sometimes 
his thought is very original, arresting, and pertinent; some- 
times it is far-fetched and of doubtful application, showing a 
powerful mind, but a more questionable judgment. Dr. Smith 
is clear and interesting, — less argumentative, less condensed, 
more rhetorical. The present discourse on the 'Imagination' 
is, I judge, one of his most powerful sermons, and yet it lacks 
the sense of easy motion and of natural force which belong to 
Dr. Hopkins. Of the three preachers, Dr. Hopkins gives me 
the strongest impressions of a rich, exhaustive, truthful dis- 
cussion of a particular theme. He is equally philosophic and 
argumentative with Dr. Lord, going into reasons, bringing out 
principles ; at the same time he has more beauty of illustration 
and is much more clear, appealing to common-sense and the 
universal consciousness of all minds. In delivery he is the 
least animated of the three, but his sermons and books read 
most admirably." 

Letters are here introduced, all written in 1870, not to illus- 
trate any special epoch in Dr. Foster's life, but to show the 

* Ex-President of Williams College. 

t Deceased Presidents of Dartmouth College. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 155 

man. The first is to his son, then out of health. After urging 
him to give up all plans of work, come home, and rest, he 
says : — 

" Dr. Dwight overworked in his preparatory course, and it 
was supposed his constitution was fatally undermined. He 
went to Northampton, and for years after his ministerial 
license, worked on a farm, until exercise and air and new 
scenes and new objects of thought had given to him muscu- 
larity and power. Eev. Dr. Day, president of Yale, was sup- 
posed to be sinking into consumption at one period of his 
early manhood, but special wisdom arid constant watchfulness 
prolonged his life beyond ninety. Rev. Dr. Ide, of Medway, 
was in a state of such feebleness when settled, that he did not 
expect to live six months, and lay awake all night before his 
ordination, considering whether he ought not to withdraw his 
affirmative to the call and stop proceedings. Yet God's bless- 
ing upon thoughtful precautions has kept him with us to this 
day. My inference is this, that with time and rest, and reviv- 
ing influences, God's Providence aiding, your health may be 
restored, and that all matters of expense, all questions of set- 
tlement, all ideas of brain-work, should be made wholly secon- 
dary, while we all unite in a long pull and a strong pull to 
secure for you more bodily vigor." 

The following letter indicates the demands that were con- 
stantly being made upon him for outside services, why he 
conscientiously performed those services when he could, and 
how with his advancing years and increasing feebleness he was 
obliged to do less and less in this direction. 

"April 25, 1870. 

"I preached an installation sermon last Wednesday in 
Groveland, Rev. J. C. Paine's. It dragged me down and 
dragged me out, as all such public, exciting occasions do. 
They appointed me moderator of the council. That I de- 
clined. Such a responsibility and display of public examina- 
tion and public criticism would worry me to death. I have 
promised to preach an installation sermon in Essex next week. 
But I think I must put on the brakes hereafter upon all these 
foreign public demands. I have not strength to perform the 
duties I owe to my own people. I have consented to take 
these important services abroad only that I might maintain 
undiminished my influence at home. A favorable estimate of 
a minister in the community and in the surrounding churches, 



156 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

is one of the great sources of power. But if I have not 
already earned that estimate, I am too late in the day and too 
feeble in vitality. I had better stop short and consecrate my- 
self wholly to the performance (inadequate as that must be) 
of home duties." 

The succeeding letters were written to his wife, then at 
Saratoga with a sick brother. They show the vein of play- 
fulness in his nature, which he conscientiously held in check 
throughout his ministry, and which constant illness greatly 
diminished, and yet which was ever breaking forth most unex- 
pectedly and delightfully. 

"July 17, 1870. 

"My Dear Wife, — I will spend a few of my vacant mo- 
ments in writing to you a vacant letter. I will arrange my 
thoughts under three heads, telling you, — I. What I know and 
you don't. II. What you know and I don't. III. What we 
don't either of us know. 

" Head the first. — Our sidewalk looks very beautiful, and 
if we had eleven or twelve little boys and girls, it would be 
the funniest place to roll a hoop you ever saw. Yesterday, we 
had peas from our garden, first-rate. To-day we had apples 
from one of our trees, fried into sauce, first-rate. The flower- 
beds are blossoming full. Our house is as cool as a cucumber. 
One thing more comes under Head first, i. e. if you walk to a 
post-office, half a mile away, in a hot day, and fail to find a 
letter which was expected and was due, it has a very depress- 
ing effect on the spirits and the health, and the walk home in 
such a frame of disappointment is very likely to produce sun- 
stroke. 

"Head the second. — You and A. reached Saratoga Wed- 
nesday night, very tired and sleepy; glad to get within the 
reach of medicinal springs; glad to get out of the sight of 
ministers and all their kin and all their botherations. You 

have been introduced to Rev. Dr. , of New York City, 

and Rev. Dr. , of Brooklyn, and Rev. Dr. , of Albany. 

You have come to the very just conclusion, that the minister 
with whom you are more particularly acquainted is a poor 
stick by the side of many of his brethren. You have drank 
of the Hathorne spring, and of the Congress spring, and of the 
Empire spring, and of the Columbian iron tonic, and still cry, 
'It is not enough.' You have been into the Indian wigwam, 
and have bought a feathered arrow, tipped with bone. You 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 157 

have sat in the great parlor of Union Hall, to see General 
Grant go by, and also to hear the music of fiddles and of flying 
feet in the dance. You have ridden by the race-grounds, and 
have peeked over the fence to see the blooded horses run. You 
have heard it predicted that France will conquer Prussia in 
war, and that this Republic, rather than allow France to seize 
Cuba, will put her oar into the waves of tumult and blood. 

"Head the third. — This division of my subject might be 
made very long, but for want of room, must be short. The 
moon is made of green cheese. The roof of our house will 
leak badly next winter. One other thing ought to have come 
under Head I. I think of you a great deal. I adore you. 

"I am your affectionate husband." 

" My Dear Wife, — I wrote you a letter last week, which 
you may not have received. It was written in a style of awk- 
ward friskiness, very like an ox, whose nature is to draw in the 
plow, and whose flexor muscles are hardened by toil, attempt- 
ing to run a race with an Arabian, or to gambol in the pasture 
with the colts. Please consider all my banter and playfulness 
as canceled, while I put on again the sobriety which is appro- 
priate to my character and my office." 

The next extract gives a terse and graphic resume of the 

experiences of his son and daughter-in-law, then travelling in 

the White Mountains with horse and carriage, in search of 

health. It also shows the intense delight Dr. Foster took in 

his garden. 

" July 25, 1870. 

" A. and H. are at North Conway, leaving there for Burke, 
Vt., to-day or to-morrow. Their exploration of Mount Wash- 
ington and its adjacent peaks and gorges, of Franconia Notch, 
of the Willey Notch, of the Lake of the Clouds ; their ride up 
the mountain in the railway car; their tarry over night at the 
Tip Top House, with clouds hemming them in morning and 
evening ; their successful hunt after flowers of Labrador and 
Greenland, found nowhere else in North America ; their finding 
of two remarkable butterflies ; their paying two dollars for a 
breakfast of heavy bread, chickory coffee, and uneatable eggs ; 
their pain at discovering one of the eyes of Bessie, their horse, 
stung by a bee, and swollen as big as my fist; their jubilee at 
escape from perils; their long sleep of four hours after rising 
in vain at four o'clock to see a sunrise on Mount Washington; 
their unprecedented ecstasies and their incommunicable rap- 



158 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



tures at all the diversities and sublimities and wonders of 
northern New Hampshire, — are they not all written clown in 
the chronicles which are reserved for you to read ? 

" I hate to leave our garden. Pies and sauce from our 
apples, number one in quality, we have had for a week; two 
ripe tomatoes yesterday, and half-a-dozen more to-morrow ; a 
nice cucumber from our vines last night ; string beans from 
the upper lot for dinner to-day ; peas of the second planting 
before the week is out; green corn in abundance, and the best 
early-rose potatoes will be ready by the middle of August. 
Our flowers are not abundant, but beautiful: petunias, four; 
soarlet tassel, four; nasturtium, six; sun-dial, five; phlox, a 
dozen ; balm, a dozen ; balsam, one ; mignonette, twenty ; por- 
tulacca, thirty ; eschscholtzia, sixty white and forty yellow, 
— have all appeared. The china asters, the canary bird, the 
madeira vine, the cypress vine, the peony rose, the climbing 
roses, and other rare plants are not yet blossoming, but nicely 
growing." 

This garden, under his assiduous care, had now become a 
place of rare fertility. Every inch of ground was put to good 
use, and the earth, even down to the subsoil, was turned over 
every year with his spade. Besides apples, cherries, plums, 
and grapes, it had a great variety of pear trees of his own 
planting, which were now in good bearing order. How much 
he thought of these trees appears in this somewhat remarka- 
ble instance of memory, in an extract taken from a letter 
written while he was away from home : — 

"I am glad to know all about the house and the garden. 
You will find, I suppose, the pears, in the order of their ripen- 
ing. 1, the Buffum, with sixty or seventy fruits ; 2, the 
Boussock, near the west door, twelve or fifteen fruits ; 3, the 
Hardy, near the south grapes, four or five fruits ; 4, the Shel- 
don, next tree south of Buffum, ten or twelve fruits ; 5, the 
d'Anjou, three trees adjacent to each other, some twenty 
fruits; 6, the Howell, two dwarf trees, below the house, 
twenty fruits ; 7, the Bonne de Jersey, four dwarf trees, twenty 
fruits ; 8, the Duchesse, two trees above the house, sixty or 
seventy fruits ; 9, the Dana's Hovey, next the Buffum, a win- 
ter pear, thirty fruits; 10, the Vicar of Winkfield, next to the 
Danas, a winter pear, six fruits ; 11, the Onondaga, a winter 
pear, below the house near the street, twenty-five fruits, large, 






BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 159 



juicy, and acid ; 12, the Winter Nelis, two trees, below the 
house near the north lot, a winter pear, twenty-five fruits." 

The next extract gives a pleasant glimpse of a ministerial 
association, such a meeting as all Congregational clergymen 
are in the habit of attending four or five times in the year. 

" The Association at my house was a pleasant one, except 
that the attendance was very small. Bros. S. and G. both 
absent. Two turkeys to supply dinner for the reverend and 
beloved ; only eight ministers present, and one turkey un- 
touched. S., F., F., H., F. fulfilled their parts. My sermon 
on the Pilgrim Fathers was well picked to pieces, an operation 
equivalent to the eating of the second turkey. Quite a differ- 
ence of opinion came out on the question of uniting with 
Unitarians and Universalists in Sabbath-school meetings. Mr. 
S. goes for them. Messrs. S. and W. and G. argued negatively. 
H. silent. Mr. Fisher # has not yet joined with his people in 
the Union. 'Hopes he shall have wisdom to guide him aright.' 
Mr. F. is a thoughtful, cautious, far-seeing man, lacking some- 
what the glow of the orator and the illustrative power of the 
poet, but possessed of a solid, contemplative, well-informed, 
argumentative intellect, and of very deep and warm sympathies. 
His extempore discussion of the ' Elements of Success in Pas- 
toral Labor,' was very fine. Evidently he attaches great im- 
portance to such labor, and has great success in it. He has 
seldom failed to get a sympathetic hold of any family that he 
visited. 

" The chief use of the scalpel on my sermon was to cut out 
all the illustration, history, anecdote, metaphor, episode. If I 
would be commonplace, it would be a great improvement. 
Every brother thought I was too exuberant, so abounding 
in amplifying thoughts that hearers would lose the thread 
of connection and get confused. Bro. P. ' would go a good 
many miles now, to hear me preach a sermon wholly devoid 
of illustration, — bald, totally bald, limited to half an hour, 
and made up entirely of abstract truth.' Mr. H. discussed 
the subject of 'Fear as a motive to be presented in the 
pulpit.' It was a very clear, logical, conclusive argument, 
reaching conclusions somewhat different from those of Brother 
Murray, in his Music Hall sermons." 



* The late Rev. Caleb E. Fisher, of Lawrence, Mass. 



160 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

The following extracts are autobiographical in their char- 
acter : — 

" Lowell, Jan. 24, 1871. 

"My Beloved A , — I must catch a little period to write 

to you, although I am driven beyond measure, and am pressed 
by weariness of body and distraction of brain almost out of 
life. During the week of prayer and the two Sabbaths adja- 
cent, I made twelve extempore addresses, and preached one 
hundred and twenty-six pages of manuscript, every word 
written during that time and the week before. The whole 
constituted eight solid hours of talk. The three sermons were 
'A Eeview of the Year,' on 'Prayer,' and on 'Individual 
Influence.' Last Sunday I had two sermons, on 'The Peace 
of God like a River,' and ' The Joy of the Angels ' ; the whole 
of the first and half of the second written last week. I have 
to prepare a sermon for next Sabbath, in the Y. M. C. Asso- 
ciation course, on 'The Energy of Christian Hope.' It 
rejoices me greatly to know, as I learn from your letters, that 
you are writing sermons with an eager, absorbing interest. 
Of course, no man can succeed in any work in which he does 
not delight, and above all other occupations, writing sermons % 
demands, in order to success, an enthusiastic soul. To have 
the orator's glow in the closet, — the same profound sympa- 
thy, kindling ardor, intense earnestness, which are awakened 
in the true extempore orator by the presence of a public 
assembly, — I believe to be the surest omen and token of elo- 
quence. When Daniel Webster had finished his eulogy on 
Adams and Jefferson, he remarked to a friend, that in writing 
the speech which he had put into the lips of John Adams, the 
page was wet and blotted with tears. I believe that the min- 
ister who never cries in writing a sermon will never make 
anybody cry in hearing it. 

"With the little amount of money I can put into books, I 
had rather have it spent for sermons than any other kind of 
theology, — Caird, Kerr, T. Binney, J. Hamilton, Liddon, Gar- 
bett, Bernard, Wadsworth, Shepard, Wm. Adams, A. C. Thomp- 
son, A. P. Peabody, have "published volumes that I wish for. 
As to larger works, I should choose as follows : Porter's Hu- 
man Intellect, McClintock and Strong's Encyclopaedia, Storrs 
on the Constitution of the Soul, Guizot's Meditations on Chris- 
tianity, Goldwin Smith's Three Statesmen, G. P. Fisher's Es- 
says, Shedd's Homiletics, Hoppin's Homiletics, Hagenbach's 
Rationalism, Barnes's Essays, McCosh's Intuitions of the Mind, 
Taylor's Restoration of Belief. Have you Woolsey's Sermons, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 161 



and McCosh's and Shedd's, and the Philadelphia Lectures 
( Wm. Adams, Schaff, Haven, etc.), and the last Boston Lec- 
tures, and Burr's Ad Fidem ? These are volumes I wish to get. 
" Which do you go for as governor of Massachusetts, — Loring, 
or Butler, or Jewell ? Which do you go for as next president 
of the Republic, — Grant, or Boutwell, or Chase, or Hoffman ? 
Which do you go for as ruler of France, — Thiers, or Napoleon, 
or Chambord? Which do you go for as president of Yale, — 
Porter, or Thompson, or Storrs? Which do you go for as 
champion of literature and prince of preachers, — Murray, or 
Talmage, or Beecher?" 

The extract that follows was written to a young minister, 
perplexed with not uncommon parish troubles. Its humility, 
wisdom, and self-forgetful spirit help us to understand why 
Dr. Foster never had a personal enemy in any of his parishes. 

" I preached, soon after I came here, six years ago, against 
balls and dancing and such like frivolities ; yet two or three 
families of my church send their children to dancing-school, 
and justify the measure. My first presentation of my views, 
as to vain amusements, have delivered my conscience. Dan- 
cing is not so obviously and undeniably a sin as to make it a 
test of Christian character. Opinions differ ; social customs 
differ; reasonings as to manners, refinements, and graceful 
accomplishments differ. It is not for me to make my con- 
science an authoritative standard, when standing on this debat- 
able ground. If a respectable majority or minority of the 
church conscientiously believe that these vain amusements, 
whist and dancing, are not essentially sinful, and are not 
greatly harmful, they must stand or fall to their own Master. 
I do not cast them out as aliens from the commonwealth of 
Israel, nor rebuke them as if they deserved to be so cast out. 
They know my opinions; I have expressed them; I refrain 
from the questionable practice; and there my responsibility 
stops. Precisely so of Masonry and other secret societies. I 
was besieged once, twice, three times, four times, to join one 
of those here. I declined by letter, giving my reasons frankly 
and unambiguously. There my action and my duty stop. 
These principles I have acted upon for thirty years. In con- 
versation with a brother minister on this subject, he some- 
what harshly criticised this method of action, and had much to 
say to me of moral courage and decisiveness and positive 
power. I leave it for the history of the future to tell which 
influence is most positive, decisive for the removal of evil and 



162 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



the upbuilding of right. It is a marvellous combination to 
reach, the true blending of holy boldness and Christian wis- 
dom. The minister, not less because he is wise and holy and 
considerate and tender of others' feelings, must be prepared 
to bear these sufferings. We live in the midst of finite minds, 
liable to misinformation, misinterpretation, and mistake. This 
is true even of the best. We live in a period of criticism; and 
ministers, far more than fifty years ago, are subject to the 
searchings of a fastidious taste, a doubting science, and cavil- 
ing world. It is not an unheard-of thing for ministers of 
highest devotion to Christ, and of large ministerial gifts, and 
an ultimate popularity and power such as the world acknowl- 
edges with admiration, to fail to satisfy some good men. Dr. 
Wayland, when in Boston, was visited by an earnest Christian 
brother, who advised his pastor to ask for a dismission, on the 
ground that he (the visitor) did not like Dr. Wayland' s ser- 
mons. ' Neither do I like them,' said Dr. Wayland. ' No 
man can see their imperfections so clearly or feel them so 
deeply as myself. I advise you to go and hear Brother Bald- 
win, or Brother Stillwell, or Brother Sharp, — they are power- 
ful and acceptable preachers. I shall not feel injured if you 
leave my congregation.' The two men then knelt down #nd 
prayed together, and wept together, and when they arose the 
disaffected member had new views. Ever after he had a love 
and admiration for Dr. Wayland, which many waters could not 
quench and many vicissitudes could not change. Rev. Dr. 
Hopkins, the great theologian of Newport, had a similar expe- 
rience with his congregation. He preached for six months 
before settlement, and a growing dislike was distinctly appar- 
ent. He gave up all idea of installation, wrote a farewell ser- 
mon, full of humility and love, prayers, tears and groans, 
preached it, and the heavenliness of his temper and the power 
of God's Spirit changed the whole audience from indifferent 
hearers to warmest and life-long friends. We must all live 
and learn, trying to lift our sermons up to a higher and nobler 
platform, and if we cannot obviate defects, bearing patiently 
and forgivingly the mention of those defects." 

In 1871, the church edifice of the John-street Church was 
largely reconstructed. As the work went on, Dr. Foster wrote 
regarding it in this half-comic and half-serious vein : — 

"October 16, 1871. 

" Repairs in our church are progressing somewhat slowly, 
but it is a more extensive job than anybody at first supposed. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 163 



When the church is modernized, front beautiful, vestibule spa- 
cious, stairs convenient, galleries enlarged and lowered, lights 
brilliant, pews cushioned above and below, pulpit made into a 
lawyer's bookstand, recess bringing in back sunshine, walls 
frescoed, ceiling whitened, making in effect a reconstructed 
and somewhat costly temple — what then? Why, then, old 
wine won't answer in the new bottles, and new champagne will 
be needed to give a more sparkling and effervescent drink. 
Eheu! eheu! I have passed the dead-line of fifty; am near 
the deader line of sixty ; shall I ever reach the deadest line of 
seventy? It is singular what a power of freshness, of purity, 
of vivacity, of original thought, of unanticipated brilliancy, 
always piquing curiosity, often touching deep pathos and high 
genius, belongs to the young minister. Well, I like to hear 
the young ministers myself. I am obliged to confess it. I 
always did like to go to commencement, and hear the youths, 
new fountains just gushing out of the hills, morning stars 
rising for the first time over the horizon, flowers of an unknown 
variety appearing in the garden, promise of genius and power, 
omens of coming good to the country and race, centre of loves 
and hopes and joys. I bid all young ministers God speed. I 
rejoice in the auguries of their usefulness. I thank God for 
their beauty, their hopefulness, their ardent aspirations, their 
springing advancement." 

More autobiographical letters, written in 1872, are here 

inserted. 

''January 20, 1872. 

" My Beloved A , — The weeks and the months are pass- 
ing, now slowly stepping, now swiftly flowing, as sadness falls, 
or as light is glowing. And yet you do not write to me. Please 
tell me why. Are you sick ? If so, write one word, that I may 
send back a drop of sympathy to express my love, if not to 
impart comfort. Are you offended with me? If so, tell me 
for what. I am perfectly unconscious of any cause. Are you 
driven with work and oppressed with care ? If so, remember 
that for eight years, during your studies at the Academy, at 
College, and in the Theological Seminary, I was equally driven 
and oppressed, and yet I failed not at all (or very seldom, if at 
all) to write you a weekly letter of some eight pages. Remem- 
ber, still further, that I am fast becoming aged and feeble. I 
am cut off from a score of recreations, in lectures, concerts, 
conventions, ministers' meetings, social meetings, literary clubs 
and reunions, rides on the railroad, rides in the steamship, rides 



164 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



in the carriage, jaunts on the mountains and on the prairies, 
travels in foreign lands, which give to younger men refreshment 
and delight. Remember, also, that God in His holy providence 
has taken from me a large proportion of my children, quench- 
ing dearest hoj)es built on their earthly lives ; that I am left 
comparatively alone ; that my heart hangs on you with a fond 
abandon and a despairing grasp ; and that if you leave me to 
swim alone, I shall go down in the waters, speedily and hope- 
lessly. Remember, again, that I am by constitutional temper- 
ament, and by all the habits of my life, not elated; that I am 
now passing through a crisis in John-street Church. Our debt 
is considerable, and we are anxious with regard to lifting it. I 
am struggling in deep waters ; if you can stretch out your hand 
to me, to hold me up, please do so. 

" Do you find yourself preaching with freedom and ease and 
with a sense of God's presence with you, in your new church and 
to your new congregation? In my own experience, when I 
went from Henniker to Pelham, from Pelham to Lowell, from 
Lowell to West Springfield, from West Springfield to Lowell, 
it took me two or three months to throw off all chains of con- 
straint and to get the perfect sense of a home feeling. Then, 
in each case, my mind seemed to break into a new field of lib- 
erty, as if my wings had grown and clouds had been dispersed 
and mountains had sunk into plains, so as to give me a wider 
field of view. I have no doubt that in my own case, in my 
excitable, sensitive, enfeebled condition, it was necessary for 
me to throw myself out of the ruts ; break away from per- 
plexing and hindering difiiculties ; to surround myself with 
new hopes and aims and helps. I believe that sixty years ago 
a minister could be settled for life, like Dr. Storrs of Braintree, 
like Dr. Blanchard of Lowell, like Dr. Spring of the Brick 
Church, New York, and hold on for forty or fifty years, with 
tranquillity of mind, with enduring strength of body, with ever- 
increasing spiritual and intellectual power. But the standard 
of preaching has changed. The calls upon a minister's time 
are greatly multiplied. The confusion and the excitements 
and the distractions are tenfold more; and he must be an ex- 
traordinary man, both in bodily vigor and mental elasticity, 
who can hold on for fifty years without a change and the use 
of old preparations and the stimulus of new associations. 

"I have been reading Taine's Literature, and I dislike it 
exceedingly. His preference of French frivolity and corrup- 
tion over English purity fills ine with amazement. His false 
theories as to the sources of genius and the various agencies 
which educate and exalt the faculties, make me indignant. His 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 165 



failure to appreciate such a mind as Milton's, and to form any 
proper estimate of Christ's religion, makes me sad. The book 
has splendid passages, but it is a dangerous one to put into the 
hands of a young man who has no fixed principles of literary, 
philosophy and of religious faith. I have been reading the 
report of H. W. Beecher's Jubilee Week. Grand and beauti- 
ful was such a meeting, and such a quarter-century's review. 
Grand and beautiful are the results of that ministry, if the 
three thousand members of that church are all Christians ; if 
the mission branches, growing out of that parent stock, are all 
inspired by the spirit of Christ ; if the whole harmonized sys- 
tem of Beecher's teachings is built on the foundation of the 
gospel. The testimony of such men as Dr. Storrs, Dr. Buding- 
ton, and Lyman Abbott is very valuable. Sometimes I think 
Beecher has done the greatest work, in the power of popular 
impression, of any man since Luther. I have nearly three 
hundred published sermons of his in my newspaper rolls. I 
have kept them for nearly twenty years. He is absolutely 
inexhaustible. Time will test him and his work, and the Lord 
will reveal in the great day. He has some startling errors, 
thrown out, apparently, not as a fixed theological opinion, but 
as a transient policy, a tub to the whale, a spoon to the fish, as 
much as to say, C I shouldn't bite a bare spoon, but there is an 
immense lot of absurd fishes that will, so I throw out a shining 
spoon ! ' He has also a large number of valuable truths, pow- 
erfully expressed, for which the Lord be thanked, if he does 
not use the truth as a rim of sugar to render palatable a cup of 
poison." 

In April, 1872, Rev. J. D. Potter, the evangelist, came to 
John-street Church by invitation, and labored several weeks. 
The subjoined letters describe the work. 

"Lowell, May 6, 1872. 

" My Dear A , — The blessed work of God is still going 

on. I preached yesterday, and, at the close of the morning 
service, I judge that three hundred persons rose, testifying by 
that act their purpose to seek Christ, or, if they were members 
of the church, to reconsecrate themselves to the service of the 
Lord, and to commence new efforts for the salvation of souls. 
One hundred of these I presume have recently been awakened 
to a sense of religious worth. In the evening meeting, — a 
prayer-meeting for the church and an inquiry meeting for the 
impenitent, blended into one, — seventy-five or eighty rose for 
prayers. Sabbath-school teachers were requested to report to 






166 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



the superintendent the number of scholars in their classes 
recently hoping in Christ. More than fifty names were handed 
in. Ten men, all new converts, rose in the evening and spoke 
for Christ. Tears were in all eyes, — of joy for the past, of 
anxiety for those now unconverted, of hope for the future. 
Oar meetings for this week are all like the one Sunday even- 
ing, — for prayer, and inquiry, and the testimony of new con- 
verts. We are laboring in the day-time, pastor and church, as 
far as possible, to reach all our families again, by personal re- 
ligious conversation. We shall continue these forms of labor 
through this week and next week. All hearts seem wonder- 
fully open to the influence of conversation, and anxious to 
know, by personal counsel, the way of life." 

" My Beloved A , — My health continues infirm. My 

cough is op]3ressive, and my strength is very small. Last week 
I lost four of the seven days' meetings. * Yesterday I was not 
able to be out in the afternoon. Calls for labor are multiply- 
ing upon me, — calls that are urgent, important, delightful, — 
and yet my strength is totally inadequate to meet them, and 
seems likely so to remain. We had a prayer-meeting and an 
inquiry meeting combined, in the body of the church, yester- 
day afternoon, — inquirers sitting in the centre, Christians on 
the side aisles. It was a most impressive and blessed meeting, 
with undeniable marks of the Holy Ghost, — such a meeting 
as we have not had in John Street for more than twenty years. 
More than a hundred rose for prayers, and most of them ex- 
pressed an earnest determination to seek the Lord, — not all 
expressing a hope in Christ, but nearly all an intense and deep- 
seated wish to be Christians. Probably thirty of the one hun- 
dred came out clear and decisive for Christ. Some of their 
testimonies yesterday were exceedingly clear and emphatic, as 
they rose before five hundred people and proclaimed their 
fealty to Christ and their joy in the Christian consecration. I 
never heard a more decisive, intelligent, unqualified announce- 
ment of love to Christ, and of the evidences which indicate 
true conversion, than L heard from some of them. I think 
some seventy-five of our congregation are under deep convic- 
tion of sin ; I think half that number are hoping in Christ. 
The work thus far outruns our expectations, outruns our 
largest faith. It is the Lord's doing ; it is marvellous in our 
eyes ; it is the infinite riches of His grace. We bow down be- 
fore Him in adoring thanksgiving. Continue, I beseech of 
you, my children, to pray for us." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 167 

" Rev. H. G. Safford : 

" My Dear Brother, — Yours of the 25th instant is received. 
In the month of April, 1872, Rev. J. D. Potter labored with 
my people a fortnight, preaching two sermons daily, conduct- 
ing a prayer-meeting of half an hour before each sermon, and 
an inquiry meeting of half an hour after each sermon. . . . 
A marked and decisive religious awakening followed in my 
congregation. Many were present from other churches, 
though we failed to secure union services. I suppose one hun- 
dred and fifty, at least, professed hope in Christ as the result 
of these meetings. Forty-six joined my own church at the 
July communion following. They have adorned the doctrine 
of their profession. Strong men in their prime, young men 
and women of culture and promise, just entering the sphere 
of active life, were among the subjects of the work. Mr. 
Potter's labors were preceded by much visitation and prayer 
among my people, and were followed by the same Christian 
fidelity. It is impossible to assign the relative measures of in- 
fluence. I can only say that one of the happiest revivals ever 
experienced in my ministry was granted through divine 
grace." 

In July, 1873, Dr. Foster accompanied his son and daughter- 
in-law in a carriage drive through the White Mountains to 
Bethel, Me. The following extracts, the second one covering 
a postal card, were written on this delightful journey. 

"Jackson, N. H., July 27, 1873. 

" My Dear Wife and Daughter, — Here we are, in the midst 
of the mountains, spending our Sabbath. We have been out 
to walk. I left A. and H. and M. one hundred rods back in 
the woods, by the falls of the Wild Cat River, where the stream 
rushes down a long succession of cascades, where its bed is 
the everlasting rock, the granitic ribs of the earth, entirely 
immovable till the heavens be shaken and rolled together ; and 
where the water, carrying stones in its plunging current, has 
struck an eddy, set the stone into a whirl, and caused it to 
grind out a basin more symmetrical than any pot or kettle of 
the store. Some of these pots, ground into the solid granite, 
hold a pailful, some a barrel-full, and some are so deep as to 
hide a man standing within them, and wide as the outstretch 
of his arms. There A. and H. were with their Bible and their 
guide-book, studying the works of nature and reading the 
words of God. I went to the top of an adjacent hill, four 



168 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



hundred feet in height, and there the mountains lay couchant 
and slumbering on every side. I counted twenty, each as big, 
seemingly, as Monadnock, and no one of them more than two 
miles away. There they stand, grim, giant sentinels (if it is 
lawful for me to wake them up, when I just said they were 
asleep), watching over the plains below to keep them from 
harm; looking off upon the histories, the sorrows, and the 
follies of this round world ; testifying to the nations and the 
centuries of God. Mount Washington I could not see. It is 
twelve miles away, and the place where I stood was so low that 
it was hid from me by intervening summits. When I see the 
king I expect to forget the rest ; but thus far in this region, 
the baby mountains are bigger than any adults I have seen 
before. 

" We went to church this morning and heard a sermon from 

Eev. Mr. H , an English Methodist, from the text, ' Turn 

to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope.' It was plain, unim- 
aginative, practical, impressive. I could not but think of the 
stronghold of mountains which the Covenanters found, and 
yet Claverhouse slew them ; which the Tyrolese found, and yet 
the Austrians overwhelmed them ; which the wife and children 
of Cornelius Campbell found, and yet Chocorua murdered them ; 
which Chocorua himself found, in the tops of majestic rocks, 
and yet the bullet of Cornelius Campbell pierced him through. 
We are prisoners of sin and of despair, of darkness and sor- 
row, prisoners in a dungeon where Hope holds the key. We 
may turn to a refuge more sure than any chain of mountains, 
however imposing by nature, however fortified by art, to the 
Lord, our Rock and our strong Tower." 

"Shelburne, N. H., July 29, 1873. 

u Dear C and JV- ,• — We journeyed yesterday from 

Jackson Falls to the Glen House, ten miles ; to Gorham, eight 
miles; to this place, five miles. We made the acquaintance of 
several of the old colonial fathers and revolutionary saints, — 
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Clinton, 
Clay, Jackson, Imp, Mott, Hayes, etc. They were glad to see 
us, and asked us to stay longer. We found them very com- 
municative and agreeable ; instructed in geology and botany ; 
full of elevated thought ; specially booked up in history and 
the fine arts. It rains. Bethel is fifteen miles away." 

"My Dear Wife and Daughter, — We reached Bethel two 
hours ago all safe, we trust all well. We have had a delight- 
ful ride. We have ridden two hundred and five miles. If A. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 169 



had taken the straightest road he would have saved fifty miles, 
but would have failed to see any of the mountains. He 
passed up the west side of Lake Winnipesaukee, a much more 
bold and rugged road than on the east side, by WolfboroV 
The mighty hills which hem in the lake, send down each its 
foot to the water, and the road for twenty-five miles runs up 
a hill and down a hill into a glen, then up a hill and again 
down a hill, climbing over these several feet of the moun- 
tains, probably more than forty or fifty slopes. The road is 
more difficult, but the views are very much more fine than on 
the other side of the lake. From Centre Harbor to North 
Conway the roads are more level, passing around, in a semicir- 
cle, Chocorua and his majestic friends. From North Conway 
to Bethel you pass around another semicircle, going through 
Pinkham Notch, cutting directly across the Mount Washington 
range, — the first fifteen miles uphill, the last twenty-eight 
very much downhill. The roads in the White Mountains are 
kept in perfect order, at great expense. I shall not attempt to 
describe Mount Washington. Words are poor, and thoughts 
are inadequate, and the intellect faints and reels before the 
tremendous majesty of this rock-embattled and wooded mon- 
arch. His pedestal is a mighty base of continental dimensions, 
eighty miles or more in circumference, and on this raised 
throne, with his subject mountains scattered in every direction, 
the king of the mountains lifts his head. Those who stand 
on the summit can probably appreciate him, but riding through 
the ravines of the Notch and looking up through the trees, I 
could nox fully measure him. He looked to me like a terrible 
thunder-cloud, black, illimitable, inaccessible, and threatening, 
piled up in the heavens. I do not know but I could get famil- 
iar with him and call him brother and friend, but he seemed to 
me like some ferocious and couchant monster, ready to over- 
whelm and destroy me. One conviction assuredly was pressed 
in upon my soul, that of the French preacher in the presence 
of Death, ' God only is great.' The breath of the hills is balm ; 
the song of the birds is an echo of the inward melody. Let 
us call upon our souls to bless Him. But I am tired, and must 
lay down my gray-goose quill, alias golden tip and silver 
handle. How strange that our geese are no longer of any use ! 
Their quills are obsolete, and so are their feathers. The most 
miserable night I have had since I left home was on a feather 
bed, the best one on a straw bed. Looking things all over, I 
guess I love you." 

12 



170 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

In the fall of 1873, Dr. Foster wrote certain letters to his 

son, from which extracts are here taken. They will explain 

themselves. 

"November 3, 1873. 

" Dear A , — I send you by express six volumes and a 

roll of papers. I like the subject of your proposed lecture.* 
If you write out on each of the points of your programme an 
argument, with consecutive thought and illustrations corres- 
ponding, you will have material enough for more than one lec- 
ture or two, and it will be very rich and very germane to the 
times. I am sick to-day and unable to accomplish any amount 
of thinking or writing. Most of the questions proposed in 
your letter, will be answered by the scraps I send. I think I 
should not refer to actresses, Siddons, Kemble, Cushman, 
Rachel, Mars, or Mowett, or any of the rest, with approbation. 
These women had great talent, and some of them were per- 
sonally pure, but many actresses are not pure, and the theatre 
is a corrupting agency. The tendency towards this pleasure, 
in all our youthful circles, is now violent and alarming. A 
thousand dollars or ten thousand would not tempt me to say 
one word which, by any implication or twist,could be supposed 
to favor theatres. I should expect to betray exemplary young 
men and young women into false views of life and character, 
to the soul's eternal loss." 

"December, 1873. 

" I was sick last week with sleepless nights and drenching 
sweats and protracted headaches, partly the result of a con- 
stant attendance upon Miss Smiley' s meetings, and of my 
great anxiety regarding them. I think their influence will be 
permanent and beneficial. The lady is a highly-cultured, 
spiritual, and impressive preacher. She quickens Christians in 
the best way, by clear and instructive views of truth. She 
had not the first sentence of 'clap-trap from beginning to end. 

" I send you the books, and I pray the Lord to endow you, 
dear A., with his best gifts for the sermons. If you can over- 
throw the occult and subtile and plausible skepticism, which is 
entering our families and pervading the minds of our reading- 
youth, you have done a great work. There are bold attacks 
on the very foundations, by Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Spencer, 
Mill, Emerson, Weiss, Frothinghani, Lubbock, and others. 
There are side-thrusts and secret underminings by men who 
stand nearer the evangelical line, by Maurice, Martineau, 

* " Woman; the Sources of her Power." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 171 

Kingsley, Murray, Hedge, Freeman Clarke, and others. I 
think the second class are more dangerous to our conscien- 
tious young men than the first." 

A letter in acknowledgment of a substantial Thanksgiving 
remembrance from loved parishioners runs thus : — 

"Lowell, Dec. 3, 1873. 
" Me. and Mes. Beooks : 

"My Very Dear Friends, — We wish to thank you with 
earnest gratitude for the token of your remembrance received 
last week, the evening before Thanksgiving. If I were to call 
upon memory for her best service, I could not recall all 
the proofs of your love, — carpets, tables, firkins of butter, 
baskets of pears, discounts on interest money, sums in the 
bank, and what is of more priceless value, words of encour- 
agement, hand-pressures of kindness, wrestling prayers, an 
influence in the city everywhere and always sustaining and 
complementing my ministerial labors. God has given me many 
valued friends, but of all the counsellors and helpers, whether 
of my youth or manhood, whether of my early or later min- 
istry, none are more highly valued, none more truly invaluable, 
than yourselves. May God reward and bless you ! 

"My dear Mr. and Mrs. Brooks, your health is feeble, and so 
is mine. We have passed the summit, we are on the downward 
slope, and are not far from the end of the solemn drama of life. 
I wish to give to you assurance of my deep conviction that 
you have rendered to me essential help in this great life-work. 
We are all dependent upon one another, more than we know; 
the minister most of all is dependent upon Christian helpers. 
I have leaned upon you and leaned hard. If you get to heaven 
first, I hope you will be near the golden gate, if God shall give 
permission, to be my angelic convoy to the throne. If I get to 
heaven first, I will wait for you on the border. 

"With true and grateful affection, yours, e. b. f." 

Another, to a parishioner, gives a glimpse of his methods 
and faithfulness in pastoral work. 

" My Very Dear Friend, — I feel an inexpressible anxiety 
for your spiritual welfare, and that of your family. I have 
received from you great kindnesses. I am deeply grateful. I 
have marked with delight the warm-hearted, generous, mag- 
nanimous traits of your character and life. But are these 
enough to give an entrance to heaven ? ' One thing is needful.' 



172 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

There is one spiritual, indispensable treasure. The Giver of 
that treasure is Christ. The seal on that bondis faith. The 
treasure itself is holiness of heart. Among your valued pos- 
sessions is that laid up, the costliest, the best, the most highly 
prized? Pardon the importunity of your pastor, who loves 
you, who admires you, who longs that you may have the clear 
evidence of salvation. My heart has been burdened with pray- 
ers for you and for your family for months and for years, and 
especially for these last few days. My health does not allow 
my going to see you. I have thought you would not be unwill- 
ing to receive this line. . . . With your known sincerity, 
with your decisiveness, with your perseverance, with your 
combined counsels and prayers, the offering of yourself to 
Christ would be most precious. May God guard you and keep 
you ! May He guide you by His counsels and bless you ever- 
more ! Your pastor and friend." 

Dr. Foster used frequently, at the beginning of the year, to 
preach a sermon on the eminent dead of the previous year. 
At the close of 1873, he did this, speaking of Major-general 
Canby, Admiral Winslow, as representatives of the army and 
navy; of James Brooks, Oakes Ames, and John P. Hale, among 
Congressmen; of Chief-justice Chase and Judge Nelson; of 
Lewis Tappan and Edward Hitchcock, among Christian busi- 
ness men ; of J. P. Cleaveland, Kichard Storrs, John Todd, 
Zedekiah Barstow, Gardiner Spring, Joshua Leavitt, Henry 
Wood, Thomas Guthrie, among the clergymen ; — in each case 
drawing some appropriate lesson, and occupying both forenoon 
and afternoon with the subject. It was in the spring of the 
same year that Charles Sumner died. Dr. Foster prepared a 
very careful discourse on his life and character. The follow- 
ing correspondence regarding it is inserted here, as most manly 
and creditable to both parties concerned in it. 

" April 15, 1874. 

" My Dear Pastor, — Allow me to say to you with frankness, 
what I have desired but hesitated to say heretofore. I listened 
to your discourse on Charles Sumner, before our congregation, 
with intense pleasure and admiration. I thank you for it. It 
is, in my judgment, one of the most successful productions of 
your life. Your appreciative picture of Sumner was admirable, 
and worthy of yourself, as it was accurate and just. I think 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 173 



there was one prominent trait in Sumner, which I should have 
been glad to have had you make more prominent, and that was 
his forgiving spirit. His great heart knew no revenge, except 
such as the inflexible laws of justice will bring. To this law 
he committed, with no resentment, all his opponents. His 
treatment of Brooks, his assailant, against whom he never 
uttered a bitter word, was one of the sublimest pictures of 
moral grandeur in all history. One thing more. You do not 
need to say, you ought not to say, that in the difference be- 
tween Grant and Sumner, you think Sumner was wrong. How 
can you think so? If you think so, how can you say so? Your 
discourse will sometime be printed. That sentiment alone 
mars it. Leave it out. You do not know that Sumner was 
in the wrong ; men differ in opinion upon that ; therefore it is 
safer to insert no doubtful expressions. Do not leave a scratch 
upon a picture so beautiful, so grand, as your discourse is. 

"Your sincere friend." 

"April 16, 1874. 

"My Dear Brother, — Your favor of the 15th instant is 
before me. I thank you for its generous estimate of my address 
on Hon. Charles Sumner. I thank you also for its frank and 
manly criticisms. Between friends of searching study and 
independent thought, there should be no weak concealment, 
even though differences of opinion arise. So long as man is 
finite, and instructed by earthly and inadequate evidence, these 
differences cannot be wholly avoided. So long as Christian 
love conquers, these differences need not interrupt esteem. I 
suppose that you and I must continue to differ in our estimate 
of the personal quarrel between Sumner and Grant. You attach 
more of the blame to Grant; I, more of the blame to Sumner, 
for that one unfortunate event of history. The verdict of future 
centuries, and of God's judgment, can alone settle the conflict. 
The country is divided in sentiment ; Republicans are divided ; 
noble men, of various creeds and parties, are divided. What 
the new lights, which are to rise out of the horizon, may show, 
no man can tell. These new evidences may modify the opin- 
ions of us all. No one can hold your own convictions in higher 
consideration than I do, and from no beloved friend can I differ 
in opinion with more reluctance and pain. Out of deference 
to your views, I will omit from my discourse that passage 
which relates to Mr. Sumner's disagreement with the Repub- 
lican party. Affectionately and very truly yours. 

"P. S. I accord entirely with what you say of Mr. Sumner's 
magnanimous forgiveness of Brooks, It was wonderful, and 
most admirable," 



174 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



On this topic he subsequently wrote to a friend as follows : 

" I am satisfied that a great and terrible struggle is before 
the country, within the next three years, between the forces of 
political selfishness on the one hand, and political integrity on 
the other, and that the preservation and success of the Repub- 
lican party are the only salvation of our liberties. When Mr. 
Sumner broke with the Republican party, he lost his anchor ; 
he floated out into the changing, turbid, stormy sea of the un- 
regulated Democracy. He was on the tide, which no single 
will can resist and turn back, — where Daniel Webster sunk ; 
where Rufus Choate sunk; where Horace Greeley sunk. I 
believe, when you trace the history of the Democratic party, 
comprehensively and profoundly, in its relations to slavery and 
to great constitutional questions of human rights, you will find 
it is not safe to put the nation in its power. I did not think 
so before the war ; I have had no other conviction since. I 
have also believed that every high-minded and patriotic man 
would come out from the Democratic party, sooner or later, 
and that, as a party, it would die. I have once more unrolled 
my volume of journalistic extracts, which I have been gather- 
ing for thirty years. I have re-read Mr. Sumner's speeches on 
the Trent case, on the Alabama case, on San Domingo, on the 
one man (Johnson) power, on the impeachment of Johnson, 
on Grant, on Greeley, on the removal of Motley. I have read 
Goldwin Smith's reply, Fish's reply, Conkling's reply, Marshall 
Jewell's reply, E. R. Hoar's reply. I can only say that I think 
Mr. Sumner was wrong in driving his difference with General 
Grant to a personal quarrel, and in driving that disagreement 
with an individual to a rupture with the Republican party. In 
my discourse on Sumner, I have put that conviction of dissent 
in the mildest possible form. I draw the picture of his noble- 
ness and power, as I believe it to be, and then add, not a 
' scratch ' of the painter's pencil, but a wart which was on the 
good man's face. Wendell Phillips somewhere says, ' There 
are four names forever to be remembered by the black race, 
with honor and with praises, — Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham 
Lincoln, John Brown, and William Lloyd Garrison.' I should 
erase John Brown from that list, and put into it Charles 
Sumner. I believe that thus far in our history, God has given 
to us four heaven-selected men, endowed with wonderful indi- 
vidual qualities adapting them to their work ; foreordained, in 
the counsels of the Almighty wisdom, to lift our nation out of 
bondage to foreign power, out of the barbarism of slavery, 
out of the political blindness, and the schemes of time-serving 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 175 

expediency, which involve the ruin of the republic. Those 
four names — and I place thern in the order of their providen- 
tial position and power, as I estimate that power — are, 
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and 
Charles Sumner." 

But it had already become evident that Dr. Foster's health 
was too seriously impaired to permit him to labor on longer as 
he had. For eight years he had carried on his work contin- 
uously in Lowell. He was now sixty-one years old. His habits 
of intense study, bringing a terrible strain upon a body per- 
manently enfeebled in college, had so completely destroyed 
his health that he could not continue at his work. From this 
time on he grew weaker and weaker, with an occasional mo- 
mentary lighting up of the old fire, until at last the vital spark 
quit an emaciated frame. The subsequent eight years of life 
were really one long-continued but steadily weakening conflict 
with death. A letter to his son, written at this time, gives 
interesting facts. 

"Lowell, April 13, 1874. 

" My Dear, Dear Son, — Yesterday I preached my last ser- 
mon in the John-street pulpit for six months to come. I hope 
that rest will recruit me. If it does not, my ministerial work is 
ended. I am faint and feeble ; have sleepless nights and anx- 
ious days ; have hardly strength to saw my wood ; cannot walk 
half a mile without my knees giving way, and shooting pains 
through all my bones. I confidently expect that exercise and 
air, and the recreation of the summer, will give me back my 
power to labor. For this I pray, and I ask for your prayers. 
My people have voted to continue my salary during the sum- 
mer, and to pay for the supply of the pulpit out of the church 
funds. They have been exceedingly kind to me, and my debt 
to them is very great." 

The action of the John-street people in thus giving him a 
long vacation, was most hearty and sympathetic. Nor was 
the kindly feeling confined to his own church. The Andover 
Conference, a body representing a score or more of Congrega- 
tional churches in Lowell, Lawrence, and Andover, by a rising 
vote, adopted a warm expression of sympathy for him in his 



176 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

illness, and of appreciation of his services to the church and 
the world. 

The vacation of six months was spent in East Burke, Vt., 
in a most delightful family of cultivated Christian people. 
The letters which follow were written during this period. 

"Hanover, N. H., June 13, 1874. 

"Dear JV- , — To-day, at eight o'clock, a. m., we started 

with A.'s horse and wagon for the Centre, rode to my father's 
old homestead, found Mr. F. and wife, native Yankees and sensi- 
ble people, owners of the farm ; went' on to the tops of the rocks 
and gazed at Moose Mountain, four miles long ; at Ascutney 
Mountain, twenty miles away ; at the ' Town Plot,' my father's 
noble pasture ; at the old orchard, worm-eaten and well de- 
cayed; at the 'mowing lot,' where I have toiled till I could 
toil no more; at the rooms where I have played and where I 
have rested ; at the graveyard, where the ' forefathers of the 
hamlet sleep ' ; — and then we came away, with a sad farewell 
to the well-remembered scenes of my childhood. Do you find 
pleasant roads, and beautiful scenery, and elegant houses, and 
mountains of sublimity, and lakes of placidity, and streams of 
gurgling melody, and meadows of flowers, and gardens of 
pears, and pastures of flocks, and hill-sides crowned with ma- 
jestic forests? This is a very remarkable world, and even if 
I were an angel, I should love to look at it. I think the angels 
are looking at it. I think the new heavens and the new earth 
of God's renovated and spiritual creation, will look very 
much like some of these spots of beauty." 

"East Burke, Vt., June 18, 1874. 

" My Dear A , — East Burke is not a place of broad 

plains like Bethel, nor of ocean views like York, nor of city 
privileges like West Springfield, — but I like it exceedingly. 
These valley roads, pushing on through interminable glens; 
these charming hill-sides, where no granite crags or bowlders 
thrust out their heads; these magnificent woods and fertile 
fields, — are a constant joy to me. The grand old mountain 
that towers south of our chamber, the brook that rushes and 
gurgles and sings east of our window, the hills that swell in 
such beautiful proportions on every side, are a very good sub- 
stitute for the rote of the sea, for the sublimity of Adams and 
Madison and Washington, for the more quiet and tranquilizing 
symmetry of the Androscoggin valley. 

" P. S. I wish to say a word about H.'s touching postscript 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 177 



as to Early Rose potatoes. How do you suppose, daughter of 
mine, that I can succeed in cultivating Early Rose potatoes, or 
sweet corn, or hyacinth bulbs, or pear trees, or any other flow- 
ering shrub, with the whole arrayed opposition of son and 
daughter, daughter-in-law and wife, brother and sister, parish- 
ioner and friend, doctors of law and doctors of medicine and 
doctors of theology, and other professors of religion, and espe- 
cially of elegant manners, standing in my front, and beating 
me back in my laudable endeavors ? I do not think that even 
Luther could have battled so many foes, and triumphed in his 
mighty contest for right. Nevertheless, I will tell you, first, 
what I have done, and second, what so good and veracious a 
man as Judge C. C. N". promises shall be the result. I have 
hoed thirty rows of Early Rose potatoes and corn, each of them 
containing eighty hills, and each of them requiring about one 
hour to hoe. I keep up with Judge N., hill for hill and stroke 
for stroke, and, he says, amazingly energetic strokes too. I have 
worked forenoon and afternoon about six hours a day for five 
days, some days working only in the forenoon and riding out 
for fun in the afternoon. Judge N. said he supposed from my 
first letter, proposing to plant and cultivate an acre, that I 
wished to carry about thirty bushels of potatoes to Lowell. I 
failed to get here in time to plant. He then provided, as I re- 
quested, for a certain amount of hoeing. He says that if I 
help him considerably he will send me four or five barrels of 
potatoes in the fall, and I think one of them will go to Chelsea. 
' Help him considerably ' ? I guess I will ! Bring on your 
scythe and your rake and your pitchfork ; I am ready. There, 
Mrs. Inquisitor, what do you think of all that ? 
" Your loving father." 

"June 22. 

"My Dear JV- , — You ask me what I think of Henry 

Ward Beecher's opinion as to Adam's sin. In the first place, 
I think we have committed sins enough, knowingly, volun- 
tarily, and wilfully, to bring upon us the just and endless con- 
demnation of God's law. We had better forego all specula- 
tion about Adam's sin, and repent, in dust and ashes, of our 
own sins, and cast ourselves upon the mercy of the Redeemer, 
without delay, or we shall be lost. In the second place, I 
think that our relation to Adam is the same as yours to me, or 
as mine to my grandfather : it is a hereditary transmission of 
character, of which we make no complaint, and which we can 
never change. You and A. may think it a misfortune that you 
inherit somewhat of my melancholy temperament, but you 



178 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



cannot alter the dispensation. There are some advantages, as 
well as disadvantages, in our being born of Puritan ancestry ; 
there are some blessings, as well as cursings, in our descent 
from Adam. Let the fact stand in both cases. I do not think 
we could better it if we should try. In the third j3lace, I 
think that Christ, by His atoning death, has restored, and more 
than restored, the balance of loss by Adam, and we are called 
upon, not to cavil about Adam's sin, but to render adoring 
praise for the infinite and wondrous mercies of our God. We 
are better off than Adam was in Paradise. Salvation is as 
easy to us as to him. Our chance of future progress and 
glory, if we exercise faith, is greater than his was. He could 
not stand in innocence without watchfulness and prayer, with- 
out the determined, persevering exercise of holy choices. Holy 
freedom, the great prerogative of the angels, may be enjoyed 
and used by us, through faith in Christ, as easily, as largely, 
as by Adam, and with more blessed opportunities than he had." 

"June 29. 
" Beloved A and H , — There was a delightful thun- 
der-shower last night, and this morning the mountains and the 
groves, the pasture lands and the cultivated fields, the distant 
trees and the nearer shrubbery, have put on their first-best 
Sunday clothes. The air is balm, the hills are beauty, the 
brook is music, the whole diversified aspect of nature is praise. 
You cannot think how I am charmed and gratified by the 
brook, or rather, you can think, for you have been here. I 
sometimes think I could sing a song to the brook, as Bryant 
did to the stars, or Wordsworth to the trees. As it comes 
into my sight, rushing down its cascades, playing its tune 
with sweet and liquid slide over the pebbles, singing the song 
which it learned in the dim recesses of the hills, stealing 
under the bridge, sending up its reviving power into the roots 
of the grass, hastening to the embrace of the river, pushing 
on with its almost living instinct to the sea, holding in its 
arms exhalations which will once more fly to the mountains, — 
it seems to me a glorious creature, obeying the behests of the 
Most High. I was awake this morning at four o'clock, and 
saw a sunrise as wonderful as that which Webster describes 
over the pine-clad hills of Virginia, a miracle greater than 
that which Adam saw, because it has been repeated, without 
a moment of deviation in time or an inch of faltering in 
space, for six thousand years. The shower of the night had 
left its fleecy clouds and its redundant fogs, and the sun glori- 
fied them with its golden light. Old Burke Mountain towered 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 179 



over us in splendor ; the distant East Haven Mountain sent 
back its tinge of blue ; the hills around had on their deepest 
green ; the robins and the orioles were straining their throats 
with joy; the frogs had ceased their midnight chorus; the 
chickens were out for an early worm ; the cows were lowing 
for their pasture ; here and there a breakfast smoke began to 
creep out of the chimney ; and out of the darkness and out of 
the silence and out of the mystery, in the almightiness of God, 
arose a new day. 

"Now for books. I have the Boston Daily Journal, the 
Lowell Courier, ' Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson ' (Boyd), 
Nash on ' Morality of the State,' various books of Agriculture, 
various books of Law, some books of Fiction, and President 
Porter, President Hopkins, Professor Haven, President Mc- 
Cosh, and the false reasonings of Emerson and Theodore 
Parker. I have read by the day and the week in these pro- 
found depths. I should like to read by the year in that 
department of study, and by the life-time." 

"July 1. 1874. 

"My Dear N , — Do you get time to read? What are 

you reading? Our reading in theology is Spurgeon's Sermons, 
Baxter's Saints' Rest, and Hannah More. I am more instructed 
and quickened by the woman's religious writings than by 
either of the others. For news, we have certain papers; for 
fiction, we have Charles Lamb, Emma Wellmont, and Mrs. H. 
C. Gardner ; for travels, Mark Twain (foolishness) ; for litera- 
ture, Eloquent Extracts, which I brought from Lowell ; * for 
fun, a book of Agriculture. The fact is, we do not get much 
time to read. Too many brooks and birds are singing; too 
many trees and winds are whispering; too many thunder- 
storms are echoing with their divine voices; too many hill- 
tops, and mountain summits, and sequestered glens, are crying 
aloud — ' Look at me ! ' " 

To a parishioner he writes : — 

"We have a circulating library here, and books enough, — 
' Murray on the Adirondacks,' but I cannot sympathize with 
him, either in deer-shooting, or trout-fishing, or horse-training. 
We have 'Notable Men and Notable Women' ; but the most 
notable and the most attractive of all things to us, are the 
memories of Christian communion and Christian love and 
holy attainment in our own John-street Church, and in other 
churches of our acquaintance and labor. I do not depreciate 

* His newspaper clippings. 



180 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



the nobleness of eminent men of the world ; but there are bonds 
of attachment which rise above all bonds of science or liter- 
ature, of enterprise or business or politics, and join me to the 
heavenly fellowship, and join me to Christ, — and there the 
links will hold forever. ■ We have the papers, and of course 
read something of the great sensations of the day, and oh, with 
what sadness and humiliation and fear ! But after all the occu- 
pations and recreations that interest our minds, the absorbed 
affections will travel southward, and the letters of John-street 
friends are dearer to us than all else. We thank you, and we 
thank all our friends, for your remembrance of us. We thank 
our heavenly Father for the gifts of refreshing and saving 
grace imparted to the John-street Church and congregation. 
May the cloud of the divine love, now like a man's hand, cover 
the firmament ; may the drops of mercy swell to a shower ; 
may the cry for salvation fill the whole John-street house of 
worship ; may the interest in religion, and the power of prayer, 
and the songs of the converted, spread like the swelling tides 
of the sea, through the city. My dear brother, I have deep 

sympathy of joy with you and with Mrs. , in the grace of 

the adorable Redeemer, who has given to her His pardoning 
love. I anticipated this result before I left the city, from what 
I knew then of her anxious, prayerful search after the way of 
life. May grace and light and joy go with you both, in ever- 
increasing measure, to the end ! 

"I have spoken of my delight in the sublime scenery of 
mountains. I have had a very impressive view of the White 
Mountains recently. I have never been on the summit of 
Washington, but I stood last summer at the Glen House and 
at Gorham, where I could see Washington, and Madison, and 
Jefferson, and Clay, and Imp, and Moriah, and Surprise, lift 
their mighty heads, as the lions which Milton describes lifted 
their terrific forms out of the earth at creation's dawn. I 
could see them shake their shaggy mane, as the trees waved in 
the wind ; I could hear them growl, as the condensed vapors 
gathered over their heads ; I could look into their fierce eye, 
as the lightnings gleamed; I could rejoice that the Lord Al- 
mighty held them chained, lest they might leap upon me, and 
crush me out of life. I have seen the White Mountains this 
summer from the top of Burke Mountain, the highest peak be- 
tween the White Mountains and the upper ridge of the Green 
Mountains. On the eleventh of this month, I stood on that 
commanding height. Twenty miles away, to the east, were 
Mount Washington and his compeers. Ten miles away, to the 
north, was Willoughby Mountain, broken by a vertical chasm 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 181 



two thousand feet deep, and the beautiful Willoughby Lake 
sleeping at its foot. Sixty miles away, to the west, lay the 
Green Mountains, a long and stupendous chain, with irregular 
outline, like the surging waves of the ocean lifted by the howl- 
ing tempest. All the intervening space was a country, won- 
derfully diversified, of hills and valleys. In some directions 
were forests, six or eight miles in diameter. Around our feet 
were a dozen villages, with their church spires shining in the 
sun, and their white houses and flowering gardens and culti- 
vated fields sending up to our eye the tokens of thrift, and to 
our ear the hum of toil. It was a beautiful scene, its grandeur 
awakening awe ; but its chief attraction was its evidences of 
comfort and plenty, and of God's wondrous love in making 
such a world for the habitation and joy of man. On that 
day, Aug. 11, the White Mountains were partly hidden by 
mist, and it was long before I discovered their vast proportions. 
For an hour I thought it was an immeasurable embankment of 
cloud. At last they stood out bold and high and broad and 
invincible. There was a thunder-shower between us and the 
White Mountains : we could hear its rattling peals ; we could 
see the descending sheets of rain ; we could mark the rainbow 
hues of yellow and gold ; we could trace the blue sky in some 
directions, and the sunshine falling on maple orchards and on 
peaceful fields. All this diversity and richness and grandeur 
of view was beneath our feet, — even the thunder and the light- 
ning and the rain, — all but that distant group of transcendent 
mountains. And in less than forty-eight hours after we beheld 
that view, the great and terrible storm of Aug. 13, fell 
upon these summits, tore their sides with avalanches, pros- 
trated their forests with hurricane power, plowed their roads 
with impassable chasms, carried off their bridges on swollen 
tides, and made fearful havoc of their autumn harvests. Oh, 
the marvel of the mountains ! Less illimitable, less myste- 
rious, less terrible in shocks of tempest than the sea, they are 
even more likely, with their instantaneous terrors and gran- 
deurs, to overwhelm the soul. We need to take years to trav- 
erse the sea, and to study it, in order to appreciate its majesty ; 
but the mountains, in the short space of a day or an hour, fill 
the soul with wonder and awe, and subdue us into a sense of 
our own nothingness, and, if we have faith, into a sense of 
adoration." 

" My Dear A , — We have just passed through the galaxy 

of orations in colleges. They shine, somewhat as a comet's 
tail does, variously and uncertainly. Do you think that any 



182 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



of them will be set as fixed stars in the sky? I think that 
Peabody at Andover, and Porter at Yale, and McCosh at 
Princeton, make addresses which will live. Evarts on Chase 
— like Schurz on Sumner, and like Adams on Seward, and 
like Choate on Webster — was a very able eulogy, but each 
and all of them, in my judgment, had their partisan pleas and 
erroneous estimates of character and of statesmanship. Which 
do you deem the highest model of character and attainment, 
a Chalmers or a Wellington, a Jonathan Edwards or a J. Q. 
Adams, a John Todd or a Charles Sumner ? I have read two 
chapters of Dr. Hopkins' book on ' Conscience,' and the final 
summary and combination of man's faculties, entitled 'Outline 
Study of Man,' with great admiration. I find here two volumes 
of The Eclectic, for the year 1866. Its biographical sketches, 
its religious discussions of science and faith, some of its de- 
scriptions of foreign countries, are very fine. Some indolent 
literati, in their long vacations, lolling on the sofa or reposing 
under the shade, wish to read eternal novels of Smollett, or 
Fielding, or Reade, or Dickens, or perhaps eternal poems of 
Swinburne, Morris, and Whitman. I confess that this sort of 
reading, in my case, produces qualms of the stomach ; and I 
prefer altogether to read the lives of Sara Coleridge, the sis- 
ters Hare, Mrs. Somerville, Miss Sedgwick, J. Q. Adams, 
Wm. H. Prescott, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy, Fowell Bux- 
ton, Win. Wilberforce, Francis Jeffrey, Walter Scott, Thomas 
Guthrie, Thomas Chalmers; — those are the novels for me. 

" P. S. I said in one letter that I was ready for the scythe, 
the rake, and the pitchfork. You will have to take the scythe 
and the pitchfork out of that list ; they are too hard for me. 
Hoeing and raking I can attend to for three or four hours a 
day." 

The extracts which follow are from a letter to his son and 

daughter-in-law while they w r ere on a vacation among the 

Rangeley Lakes in Maine. 

"August 8, 1874. 

" My Beloved A and H- , — I find my compassion 

very much drawn out towards you, in your barbarian dwelling 
fifteen miles from the nearest lights of learning in one direc- 
tion, and in every other direction one hundred miles or two 
hundred miles from any human habitation. I should think 
you would need one or two ladies in your colony who know 
Greek and Latin, in order to preserve the balance and propor- 
tion of intellectuality. How interesting it must be to dwell 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 183 



in the midst of smudges and ammonia; to fight black flies and 
moose-flies, mosquitoes and midges; to carry round blotches 
and bites ; to wear tarlatan bags and wire nettings. Eeally, 
I think I should rather live in East Burke. I do not know but 
the broad bosoms of Mooselucmaguntic and Eangeley, with 
the elegant boats and the four-pounder trouts, might tempt 
me to bear your annoyances. Still, I believe I prefer East 
Burke. I think H. is very brave, and I hope she and M. will 
come out of the woods without being eaten up by flies and bears. 
I suppose you do not have to pay a large price for cord-wood, 
but I infer that your beef and mutton, your pork and beans, 
your flour bread and johnny-cake, your doughnuts and cheese, 
must be rather expensive. How would you like to swap a 
string of trout for a peck of raspberries ? We can make that 
trade with you, and afford to give something to boot ; for in 
picking berries we do not wet our feet, nor cover our faces, nor 
battle with an Egyptian army of insects. We have sixteen 
roads and three pastures full of raspberries, and have had grand 
times picking them. I am glad, dear A., that you have the 
love of truth and the love of souls which led you to preach to 
an audience of nine. Your usefulness may be as great preach- 
ing to nine as to nine hundred. Dr. Tyng once plodded 
through a snow-storm to find only one at meeting, and that a 
woman. He urged upon her, in earnest and eloquent words, 
Christian Obligation, and she was converted ; afterwards she 
was the means of leading his own son (the sainted Dudley 
Tyng) to Christ. After all, I hate to have you preach in your 
vacation. You need rest. Let the brain lie fallow. Raise a 
few weeds and plow them in. Nonsense and laughter and 
idleness and sleep and jolly songs are a good thing for you 
just now. Balance your eleven months' toil by six weeks' 
play. Do not make your intellectual labors so incessant, and 
your nervous anxieties so intense, as to oppress and overwhelm 
the muscular energy. I have preached only one sermon since 
the middle of April. I am obtaining a very grateful respite 
from weary and consuming cares. I hope that I am better, 
but I cannot tell at present. The machinery of body and 
brain is heavily worn and greatly enfeebled. 

" Do you think that Jules Verne, in his imaginary explora- 
tions through earth and air and sea, adds to our actual knowl- 
edge, or, through the power of his fictions, to the quickening 
of thought and the education of the mind? I have not read 
much of Morris. I have received the impression that he be- 
longs to the sensuous class of poets, and even to the sensual, 
like Swinburne and Whitman. Do you find it so in your read- 



184 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



ing? Do you regard Hedge's 'German Writers' as a profit- 
able book to read? There is a something, — a mysticism and" 
a moonshine, about the Germans, an oddity and extravagance, 
— building air-castles and founding them on fog, — which 
makes their biographies more tiresome to me, by far, than 
English and American lives. If you find it otherwise, I should 
be glad to revise my conclusions." 

On the 31st of August, Dr. Foster, in a letter, indicated his 
condition and plans as follows : — 

" We shall stay here one week more. We expect to return 
to Lowell, Wednesday, Sept. 9. It is now doubtful whether 
I shall be able to resume my ministerial work, or any portion 
of it, at Lowell. The strong staff of youth is broken, the 
easy-going springs of manhood are dislocated, the beautiful 
rod of hope is bent; I fear that even the arm of prayer and 
the crutches of love, on which I now lean (for it is all my 
strength), will not hold me up much longer. I have been per- 
mitted, through the grace of Christ, to do a little for truth 
and for souls. I do not regret that little ; I only mourn that 
it has not been more, and that it may not be longer. I have 
loved the ministry, I have loved my study, I have loved the 
place of prayer and the communion of the saints. My feeble 
service can easily be dispensed with. There are strong workers 
in the field, noble champions of the truth, consecrated servants 
of Jesus. We are living in troublous times of buffeting and 
of battle, when proud infidelities, exulting blasphemies, cor- 
rupting poetries, plausible sensualities, and false sciences are 
seeking to devour. But the Word of God, and the Son of 
God, and the Spirit of God, will conquer. Man is weak, sin is 
bold, but the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. 

"Rev. Dr. E. P. Goodwin and wife and their little son have 
been here a week. They left this morning for Chicago. Dr. 
Goodwin preached yesterday two of the most impressive ser- 
mons to which I ever listened. One of them, on 'The Human- 
ity of Christ as an Aid to His Divine Purposes of Love,' stirred 
me through and through." 



On his return to Lowell, his health proved to be, as he 
feared, not materially improved. He felt unable to meet 
his duties alone, and suggested to his people his need of a 
helper in his work. With great sympathy and kindness they 
acceded to his wish, and presently united in calling Mr. J. B. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 185 

Seabury, just graduated from Andover, to the position of 

associate pastor. Concerning these matters Dr. Foster wrote 

as follows : — 

" Lowell, Oct. 26, 1874, 

" My Beloved A , — The outlook for my future is in some 

respects brighter than it was, in other particulars it does not 
improve. My people, both church and society, have given a 
call, united and earnest, to Mr. Seabury. If he comes, he will 
take half the sermons and be mainly responsible for evening 
meetings and pastoral visitations. Mr. Seabury is in Cali- 
fornia, and will remain there six months. His answer is not 
expected for six or eight weeks. My people have adopted the 
one-sermon system for the present. This will be to me a relief, 
although my presence in the Sabbath-school and at evening 
meetings, and my prominence in making remarks, will be more 
anxiously desired than heretofore. The great sense of respon- 
sibility which I feel, and the great anxiety which oppresses me 
when these extemporaneous services are required of me, you 
know. It is doubtful whether on the whole my brain will not 
be as severely pressed by the present arrangement as by the 
former. Experience only can decide. My first sermon (Oct. 
18), on the 'Latent Power of the Church,' was wholly new, 
was fifty minutes long, and was elaborately wrought out, con- 
suming the whole previous week. Last week I wrote another 
sermon on the ' Sources of a Noble Character,' which I hold in 
reserve for next Sunday. I preached yesterday on the ' Value 
of a Social Religion ' ; half of it new. I am invited by cir- 
cular from the State Temperance Alliance to preach next Sab- 
bath on temperance, and shall do so if my mind works easily 
and in force on that topic during the week. I find in starting 
my intellectual team (I was about to say colts), that have been 
out to pasture all summer, that they are somewhat frisky and 
unwilling and uncertain. I cannot write through long ses- 
sions, with such concentrated and successful thought as once. 
I can summon as much nervous energy and intensity for the 
moment, but it does not endure. Is there paralysis of emo- 
tion ? Is there lethargy of the intellect ? Are there stiffening 
of joints and decrepitude of strength and approaching death 
for all the faculties ? I cannot tell ; and if other people know, 
I doubt whether they would be willing to tell me. One thing 
I do know, — I know that social excitements, and hard pulls in 
the study, and long sermons in the pulpit, and evening meet- 
ings, are interfering sadly with my sleep. My first Friday 
evening and my first Sunday were full of agitation. My peo- 

13 



186 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



pie came out in crowds and greeted me most kindly, but my 
next two nights were as full of horrors as Dante's Inferno. 
So last Thursday night, we had the Ladies' Sociable with us, 
and a large company and a most cordial welcome back to my 
work, — a full house again yesterday, and one of the largest 
and best of all our conference meetings last night. But I pay 
the penalty in agonizing dreams and prostrate strength for 
subsequent days. I await the future with fear, and feel that 
I am liable any month or any hour to break down utterly. 

"I have been reading the life of Henry Alford, Dean of 
Canterbury, Greek scholar and commentator, poet and sermon- 
izer, lecturer, traveller, and philosopher. How beautiful and 
blessed the gift, when a man has deep learning and versatile 
talents and ready and powerful communication, to talk and 
write and preach ! Thirty-four volumes, mostly religious, came 
from this one pen. He was as voluminous an author as Wal- 
ter Scott or Charles Dickens, and far more profound and elab- 
orate in thought and patient in evolving logical relations. I 
have not read his commentary on the New Testament, and I 
doubt whether he was not too much tinctured with the Ration- 
alism of Germany. Do you think him thoroughly and uni- 
formly sound ?" 

The letter which he immediately wrote to Mr. Seabury (as 
given below) shows the cordial feeling he entertained towards 
his younger brother, a feeling which he continued to manifest 
in all their subsequent relations. 

"My Dear Brother, — You have received from the John- 
street Congregational Church and Society, a united and cor- 
dial invitation to become associate pastor with me in the 
spiritual care of this parish. Allow me to convey to you my 
own earnest wish that you should accept the call. My state of 
health is such, that if the whole weight of pastoral care con- 
tinues to rest upon me, I shall be compelled to resign. I 
have had here a very happy pastorate of seventeen years, and 
should be glad, if the Lord has any more work for me in His 
vineyard, to accomplish that work with this people. I trust I 
shall be able to take half the sermons, and to be present, when 
storm and cold do not prevent, at evening meetings. For 
years 1 have not had strength to perform much pastoral labor, 
and it is expected that this service will devolve mainly upon 
the colleague. With the full sympathy of my heart I shall be 
interested in every service of the pastorate, and in every plan 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 187 



for the spiritual advancement of the church and congregation. 
I doubt not that we shall be able to work together in perfect 
harmony of opinion and in the dear fellowship of love. I trust 
that I shall have a full appreciation of the demands of your 
position, if you accept, leaving you to the untrammeled exer- 
cise of manly thought and Christian independence. My belief 
is that, from the counsels of congenial minds and from the com- 
munion of praying hearts, we may lessen the crushing sense of 
responsibility, and increase our power to fulfil duty. I have a 
kind and sympathizing people ; I have no enemy; I never had 
one within the limits of my congregation. I know not that I 
have ever had a severe and carping critic within that circle. 
They are characterized by independent thinking, and yet by 
unity and brotherly love, by great efficiency in the conduct of 
religious meetings, by reformatory progress on questions of 
temperance, freedom, education, benevolence, church work, 
political integrity, and yet equally, I think, are they marked 
by reverence for God's Word, and for the great principles 
which have been proved and established in the experience of 
the ages. They love and honor a faithful minister, and I think 
you will find that esteem given to you in ever-increasing 
measure. 

"I am, in the bonds of Christian love, yours." 

Mr. Seabury accepted the call, on the understanding that he 
was not to begin work in Lowell for six months. In the mean 
time Dr. Foster carried on the responsibilities of the pastorate 
alone. In the following extract it is easy to perceive the 
earnestness with which he worked. 

"January 4, 1875. 

" I am toiling on, rowing against wind and tide, but still 
toiling. I may be called suddenly and soon. I have many 
premonitions. But while I have any strength for brain-work, 
I expect to push my pen to the last quiver of the fainting 
nerves. I wrote last week an address of fifteen minutes at a 
funeral ; a sermon of thirty minutes for preparatory lecture ; 
a sermon of thirty-five minutes for Sabbath forenoon ; a sacra- 
mental address of fifteen minutes ; and an address for the 
conference meeting of last evening of ten minutes. More than 
half this amount was written first on note-paper with a pencil, 
then in larger letters for sermon reading, making an actual 
amount of writing in one week of more than one hundred and 
forty pages of sermon paper. I have another equally heavy 



188 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



drive before me for this week, — prayer-meeting every evening, 
and review of the year 1874, if possible to be accomplished. I 
am too old and too much of an invalid to go into this severity 
of study, but I cannot help it so long as I am in this ministry. 
If I had the self-possession, and the promptitude and consecu- 
tiveness of thought necessary for extemporaneous sermons, I 
could make it easier ; but as it is, I can do neither more nor 
less than to work like a dray-horse, and die in God's time. I 
have better digestion than eight months or a year ago, but I am 
feeble. I have sleepless nights; I have frequent chills; and 
after great anxieties or protracted study, I am thrown into a 
state of nervous exhaustion and disorder which is perfectly 
appalling. 

•' You have read, I suppose, Mr. G.'s reply to Dr. Holland on 
the connection between orthodox doctrine and a loose life. I 
wish Mr. G. would lay himself out with his usual strength on 
that theme, with a little less of laughter and persiflage and 
banter. It is not a subject for fun. I wish a strong pen 
would show what Calvinism has done for the development of 
the purest morals, and the highest heroism, and the grandest 
intellectuality, and what the Voltairean philosophy did to the 
morals of France, and what rationalism and boasting pride 
have always done to the family and to the self-denying traits 
of an exalted manhood. Go into the history of free-thinkers 
a little, and of the imaginative, literary, gifted souls that could 
cast off the trammels of doctrine. Recount a few of the facts 
pertaining to Hume and Gibbon, to Lord Byron and Percy 
Bysshe Shelley, to Auguste Comte and Stuart Mill, to 
Charles Dickens and Bulwer Lytton, to George Eliot and 
George Sand, to Goethe and Eugene Sue, et id omne ge?ias, — 
and then see where the charge of immorality lies, and what 
sort of religious doctrines lead men down into the ditch of the 
drunkard." 

Mr. Seabury was ordained and installed associate pastor in 
September, 1875. In a spirit absolutely free from self-seeking 
or jealousy, Dr. Foster speaks thus of the new pastor and the 
welcome he received : — 

" A meeting of welcome followed the service of ordination, 
largely attended and marked by great cordiality on the part 
of the people towards the new pastor and towards me. I 
think I shall not be loved by them any less than before. I am 
deeply thankful that my associate wins their love with such 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 189 



charm of manner, with such depth of sympathy, with such 
quickness of perception, with such gifts of conversation." 

Dr. Foster's health at this time was very infirm, as the fol- 
lowing letter, written most reluctantly to greatly loved parish- 
ioners, will show. 

"December 19, 1875. 
"Mb. and Mrs. S : 

" My Deai' Friends, — I thank you for your kind invitation 
to meet with your family and other friends at your house to- 
night. I have no strength to endure mental excitements ; and 
the more instructive and enjoyable the company, the more the 
excitement. My nervous system is broken, and my brain fails 
me where I was formerly conscious of no such feebleness, and 
where most men, in the vigor of their mental action, would 
feel that all was play and enjoyment and success. After last 
Sunday's exercises, and after the delightful fellowship of Mon- 
day evening, I had no sleep, and Monday and yesterday I lay 
on my bed and sat in my chair all day long, with a constant 
sense of pain and total incompetency. I am near the end of 
my ministry in Lowell, probably of my ministry in any place. 
I wish to express to you my profound acknowledgments for 
your kindness, and for your most efficient help in the church. 
I admire you ; I esteem and love you, and have from the be- 
ginning of my acquaintance with you all the time. Affection- 
ately yours." 



For two years more, however, Dr. Foster struggled on, striv- 
ing to carry his part of the burden ; but in the spring of 1877, 
he had a serious illness which confined him to the house for 
several weeks. On his recovery he was left much enfeebled, 
and his people kindly gave him a year of complete rest, and 
urged him to try travel in Europe, or a winter in Florida, for 
his health. 

Before this year of vacation came, he had occasion to write 
certain letters, portions of which deserve insertion here. The 
first is written just after a visit to West Springfield among his 
old parishioners, when, feeling unusually well, he had allowed 
himself more than he ordinarily dared to do the pleasures of 
social intercourse. 



190 MEMORIAL OF RET. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



"September 21, 1876. 
" I had a very precious and delightful time at West Spring- 
field, full of encouragement to my disconsolate heart, though 
adding to the weariness of my brain. Every token of glad 
remembrance and friendly confidence was shown to me. We 
had invitations to tea every afternoon we were there, two in- 
vitations to dinner and two long forenoon rides. I had social 
interviews, either at their own homes or at my sister's, with 
more than forty of my former parishioners. I preached one 
sermon at each church, and the attendance was large. It is a 
blessed thing so to preach, so to pray, so to talk, and so to live 
that, after years in the ministry spent under the watchful and 
critical eye of a discerning people, they are ready to say, no 
matter how long the absence, 'Come back again, beloved pas- 
tor, for you are welcome to our homes and our hearts.' " 

This note explains itself : — 

"Dr. 1ST. Allen: 

" My Dear Friend, — My state of health forbids my pres- 
ence at the collation this afternoon, greatly to my regret. I 
am profoundly grateful to God for the wisdom and fidelity of 
the Sabbath-school workers of our State and country. 
Through all my ministry I have leaned upon this instrumen- 
tality as my help and hope. My mind goes back to the con- 
vention of 1857, held in Lowell, with very affecting recollec- 
tions of Joseph White, Linus Child, John A. Buttrick, Dr. 
Blanchard, Dr. Edson, and yourself. I have long been im- 
pressed with the singular adaptation of the Sabbath-school to 
the conversion of the world. Next to the family and the 
pulpit, it is the leading agency of religious instruction. It has 
the quality of universality even more than they, reaching all 
classes and conditions with its heavenly lessons, and going into 
the darkest haunts of destitution and ignorance to pluck 
brands from the burning. May God spare you long, my dear 
brother, to devise and execute plans of love for the relief of 
human wretchedness." 

The letter which follows is to his daughter, then at Welles- 
ley College. 

" I hope, my beloved, that you will not worry yourself about 
your studies at Wellesley. Learn what you can. This you 
have done and are doing. If your health does not permit you 
to remain, then come home. How welcome you shall be ! 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 191 



Study Latin with me, and Bancroft's History and Prescott's 
and Motley's and Macaulay's, and Milton, Longfellow, Bryant, 
and Wordsworth. The world is wide; opportunities of study 
are many ; the intellect and soul of man are not shut up to 
any one method of study or discipline. Father Taylor had to 
have his texts read to him after he began to preach ; he could 
not read them himself, and his wife taught him. Bishop Hed- 
ding studied Latin, riding on horseback to his preaching ap- 
pointments, and whenever he came near his Methodist co- 
laborers and friends he had to hide his book. D wight L. 
Moody has gained his power mainly from Bible study ; he has 
no scholarship comparatively. Daughter of my heart, my 
hope, my joy, trust in Christ, your Lord, use what advantages 
you have, take watchful care of your health, have confidence 
in the future, and move on to great results." 

Dr. Foster states in his own words the way in which he 

came to take this year of rest. 

"May 15, 1877. 
"My Dear Son, — The committee of John-street Society 
and Church, with expressions of deep sympathy, have re- 
quested me to make the coming year one of rest and recrea- 
tion. I am to perform only so much labor and of such a kind 
as I feel that I can accomplish without exhausting and opj^res- 
sive carefulness. This was the public vote at the annual meet- 
ing. I am seriously considering the propriety, or rather the 
necessity, of sending in my resignation. I feel that I am not 
able to do anything which deserves a decent salary. I feel 
also that I cannot continue on and hang on, here or anywhere 
else, as a dead-head. I am afraid that I am a coward, for I 
shrink from the poverty, the privation, the mortification, the 
inconvenience that are before me, if I am left without a pas- 
torate. My future looks dark on every side." 

"August 25, 1877. 
" What God's purposes are for my future I cannot foretell. 
It is hard to be laid aside from Christian work. I shrink from 
death with a reluctance which I am sorry to feel, and which is 
strange in view of my faith and hopes. Life seems to me very 
beautiful and sweet. Life's relations, life's duties, life's priv- 
ileges are very precious. I think I can say, ' I love Christ and 
His work; I know whom I have believed.' I am confident 
that to depart and be with Christ is far better. But oh, for a 
higher sanctification ! Oh, for a more distinct and vivid view 
of Heaven's attractions and Jesus' love ! " 



192 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E, B. FOSTER, 

This year of vacation was spent during the fall of 1877 at 
West Springfield, in working on his sister's land and in walks 
and drives through that beautiful valley; during the winter 
following, in Jersey City, at the house of his son ; and during 
the spring and summer of 1878, in West Springfield again. 

To this period pertain the following letters. The first is to 
his son, who was proposing, just after the railroad riots, a 
series of sermons on "The Relations of Labor and Capital." 

" You refer to wages and strikes, labor and capital, matters 
of great delicacy and difficulty for the treatment of the pulpit. 
It is safer to keep silence than to make any hasty pronuncia- 
mento. Labor-reformers like Wendell Phillips will go 
strongly for communist ideas, abhorrent to gods and men. 
Judge West, nominee for governor of Ohio, and Senator 
Sherman, are advocating a congressional law, fixing a maximum, 
on the one hand, beyond which laborers shall not' demand 
wages, and a minimum, on the other, beyond which corporators 
shall not reduce wages. President Sturtevant of Illinois, 
Professor Sumner of Yale, David A. Wells, John Jervis, and 
others, are publishing books on Elements of Wealth, which 
deserve examination. President Bartlett, in his Bennington 
oration, states that depot-burners and law-breakers must be 
swept by grape-shot, and that secession traitors must be straight- 
ened by hemp, or all government is a fable. These are startling 
words, and what shall be done with these blood-thirsty viola- 
tors of property rights is a most momentous problem. I have 
no doubt that laborers in some cases have been wronged, and 
ground under the heel of the money power. Great sympathy 
should be felt for the working-man, living forever in poverty 
and sickness, with the wolf at the door. I have just as little 
doubt that the interests of labor and capital are perfectly re- 
ciprocal, and that destruction of either one is the ruin of the 
other. The course of administration pursued by the Pacific 
Mills, Lawrence; by the Fairbanks brothers, St. Johnsbury; 
by the Cheney brothers, of South Manchester, Connecticut ; 
by Samuel Budgett, as Bayne describes him in 'The Chris- 
tian Life ' ; by Titus Salt, of England, — is worthy of study 
and admiration. I commend you to God and the light of His 
grace and the word of His power in this anxious deliberation." 

The letters which immediately follow were written at West 
Springfield, in the fall of 1877. They give choice glimpses of 
his heart, of his literary tastes, and of his religious life. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 193 



"September 21. 

u My Dear Wife, — Your letters are a great comfort to 
me. Still, one thing I would rather have, and that is, yourself. 
Washington Irving found infinite delight in his nieces, and 
when absent in Spain or journeying in America, his heart was 
like a forsaken and wingless dove, bereft of its nest. Lord 
Macaulay, having a nature eminently domestic, centred all his 
affections upon his sisters. Upon one of them especially, Mrs. 
Trevelyan, he was as dependent as a little child upon its 
mother, and when she and her husband decided to go to India, 
the great heart of the historian was smitten with a fatal stroke, 
and he died. Poor celibates, both ! They did not know the 
superior joys of home, of wife, and children, all their own, 
and only their own. 

" My thoughts and my prayers and my longings are often in 
the John-street meetings. Her Sabbaths, how dear! Her 
communion of saints, how exhilarating and uplifting! Her 
Sabbath-school, what a fountain of sanctifying influences ! 
Her families of piety and love, what a scene of happiness, 
what a safeguard in danger, what a preparation for holy and 
difficult duty ! How shall I bear my great deprivation in this 
long absence? Lowell attractions become dearer and dearer 
to me, every hour that I live. Shall I ever sit down under my 
own dear roof-tree and worship again with high and holy enjoy- 
ment with my own dear people ? " 

"October 8. 

"I have been reading, Sabbath day and week day, the lives of 
Thomas Spencer, Samuel Pearce, William Milne, Philip Me- 
lancthon. Oh, for something of the divine unction and the 
spiritual power that rested upon these messengers of salvation, 
these sons of God, who were sealed upon the forehead with 
the seal of electing grace ! I have known a few such : John 
Lord, Leonard Swain, Bradford Homer, John Milton Holmes, 
Nathaniel Wright Dewey. May their numbers be multiplied 
a thousand fold ! " 

The winter of 1877-78 he spent with his son in Jersey City. 
The following extracts are from letters written during his visit 
there. 

"January 2, 1878. 

" I have not yet become much acquainted with Jersey City. 
I am the poorest of all hands to explore in such a complica- 
tion of paths, and in such a wilderness of brick and mortar. I 
have taken two rides, of five or six miles each, around the 



194 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



edge of the Bay, and along the Jersey Highlands, towards 
Orange and Montclair. There are views which never tire, — 
views of New York City, of Brooklyn, of the Hudson River 
and the East River, of the suspension bridge, of the great Bay, 
of the steamers and the ferry-boats weaving their threads here 
and there, back and forth, obliquely and at right angles, seem- 
ing often as if collisions were unavoidable, yet swiftly rushing 
on. The architecture of parts of Jersey City arrests the eye, — 
the low-lying flats, where old ocean used to sleep, and where 
salt-water marshes are now found ; the intertangled line of 
streets, where my poor, muddled head is lost ; the crowded 
throngs on some of the avenues, and the jam of teams. I 
have been out to walk several times, but have to watch my 
bearings very narrowly, or I am plunged into lanes and by- 
paths and crooked streets, where I am as helpless as the babes 
in the wood ; and if the robins and sparrows do not come and 
cover me up with leaves, I may think myself fortunate. I 
have not yet sought to study the science of journeying in New 
York. I might as well attempt to follow Kane to the North 
Pole, or Stanley to Lake Tanganyika. I attended one of A.'s 
prayer-meetings last Sunday evening, at the close of the year. 
Six youth rose to express a purpose to give the next year to 
God. Remarks and prayers were offered by six of the brethren, 
characterized by sound, plain, unostentatious thought, by hum- 
ble, fervent, loving supj)lications. By such remarks and prayers 
I am always quickened and profited. Some complain of the 
lack of literary beauty and finish in prayer-meetings, where the 
common people speak. I believe that in answer to faith, God 
gives the power of the Holy Ghost to the educated and the 
uneducated, to the well-known and the obscure, to the adult 
and the child, to the scholar and the pagan alike, and that this 
illuminating and eloquence-bestowing gift of the Holy Ghost 
is infinitely stronger than science, and infinitely higher than 
art. The love, the faith, the experience of a truly spiritual 
mind, the unselfish, sanctified aims of one who longs for the 
conversion of sinners, are worth to me, ten times over, all the 
poetry and brilliant originality and literary accomplishment of 
Byron and Shelley and Poe, of Hume and Gibbon and Emer- 
son, of Theodore Parker and Freeman Clarke and Ellery 
Channing, if you could crowd the mighty genius of the whole 
nine into one speech, and explode it in one hour. 

" The tone of society here seems very much like that of 
Lowell, Chelsea, and Boston, marked by unconstrained affa- 
bility and free cordiality, with a little more, perhaps, of the 
abandon of quick sympathy and generous regard. As to the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 195 



classical, oratorical, legal, and genius-like attainments of the 
two regions, the interchange of pastors back and forth, Griffin 
from Newark to Boston, Withrow from Princeton to Boston, 
Storrs from Brighton to Brooklyn, Hitchcock from Exeter to 
New York, Tucker from Manchester to New York; and the 
transfer of editors and lawyers, like Greeley from New Hamp- 
shire, and Raymond from Vermont, and Erastus Brooks from 
Maine, and Evarts from Massachusetts, — show that the literary 
standard and the measurement of gifts do not vary essentially 
with latitude and longitude. We are brothers. We have all 
sucked the milk of common schools. We have eaten the strong 
meat of Puritan doctrine. We have been dandled on the knee 
of economic hardship. Our literature is one. Our colleges 
are patterned after the same system. Our administration of 
government is central and universal. We speak one language ; 
we believe in one Bible. And whether natives ' to the manner 
born,' or carpet-baggers from State to State, or emigrants from 
foreign shores, we are all in the Republican boat. I trust we 
are all to be in the evangelical ark, to ride out threatening 
storms, to cheer one another with sentiments of fraternity, 
and fixing our eye on the beaming Polar Star, Christ, to sail on 
to the shining shore." . 

"February 9, 1878. 
" My Beloved Daughter, — I am seeking for absolute rest of 
the brain. I have preached only one sermon for seven months. 
Probably I shall not preach again for seven months to come. 
I attend no evening meetings ; I avoid all agitating talks ; I 
read no heavy books ; I enter into no profound researches. I 
love to hear A. preach, for it is the renewed life of my youth- 
ful and middle manhood, and the glad fulfilment of all my 
hopes. I love to brood over the memories of the past, which 
find their centre and their home in John-street Church, for it 
is the chief augury of good that cheers me for the future, it is 
the chief anaesthetic of pain which consoles me for my failures 
in the present. I love to potter over the newspapers, for, as a 
rule, though versatile in talent, they do not deeply absorb the 
mind. Yet I like the newspapers. So long as I live, the events 
of the hour, the revolutions of the kingdoms, and the specula- 
tions of the thoughtful, will have for me an amazing interest. 
When Blaine attacks Massachusetts ; when Butler goes in for 
a ninety-two-cent dollar ; when Conkling declares war against 
Hayes ; when Pendleton and Thurman, Ewing and Voorhees, 
Tilden and Hendricks, are shuffling cards and wrestling in eager 
combat for the next presidency ; when Russia is knocking at 



196 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



the gates of Constantinople ; when Hamlin and Thomas in the 
religious world, and Gladstone and Disraeli in the political 
world, are in controversy as to the righteousness of Turkey's 
cause ; when Capital and Labor are glaring at each other with 
angry eyes, perhaps soon to unsheath the sword of war ; when 
the co-education of the sexes becomes the shuttlecock and the 
football of eager combatants in the theory of the schools ; when 
Reynolds and Murphy and Miss Willard are stirring cities and 
villages with a mighty temperance enthusiasm; when Moody 
and Whittle and Pentecost and ISTeedham, and a thousand 
devoted pastors, and other thousands of the lay membership, 
are working for the salvation of souls, in the demonstration of 
the Spirit ; when self-sacrificing missionaries are blowing the 
gospel trumpet on every mountain summit of heathendom, and 
in every dark vale of superstition ; when Science is supposed 
by so many to stand in antagonism to the Bible ; when Infidel- 
ity is loudly shouting forth its blasphemies ; when the provi- 
dence of God, by wonders of judgment, by mercies, by gentle 
influences, and by silent victories, is vindicating Christian doc- 
trine, — I confess I like to read the newspapers; and ere I am 
aware, I am in the valley of Armageddon, and the hosts of 
Gog and Magog, with the armies of the Lord, are in battle 
array before my eyes. Still, in all this reading, and through 
all these agitations, faltering as I am in intellectual application, 
I am constantly gathering material for preaching, and turning 
all thoughts and all knowledge into sermons. The retired 
tallow-chandler must go down to the shop on melting days ; 
the native German, long habituated to the language of our 
country, speaks again his accustomed guttural in the delirium 
of sickness ; the renowned French conqueror, when dying, 
cried out, ' Head of the army, advance ! ' So I, though disa- 
bled and broken and set aside, cannot forget nor discontinue 
my sermons. Whatever I read, deep or shallow, solid or super- 
ficial, I am asking after illustrations and argument and proof, 
after beauty or pathos or power, after the means of quick- 
ening or conversion or sanctifi cation, as much as the miner 
searches for golden ore." 

To a young friend he wrote : — 

"A loving heart ! How complicated and how vast its ener- 
gies! It is the force of the intellect ; it is the secret of benefi- 
cence ; it is the throne of goodness ; it is the fountain of em- 
pire ; it lights up the pathway of study with motives ; it gives 
quickness and energy to thought ; it gives abiding strength, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 197 



unconquerable resolution, skill, and energy to all faculties of 
the soul. Compare such a love to the law of polarity, for con- 
stancy, or the interchange of the seasons for regularity, or the 
diffusion of the morning light for beneficence! There is no 
just comparison. The heart is true, though the mariner's 
needle may have its deflections ; the heart is true, though the 
course of the seasons is with pauses, changes, and unfore- 
seen departures ; the heart is true, though the morning light 
and the fragrant air may be darkened by clouds and poisoned 
by the breath of pestilence. Having thus an unselfish, abid- 
ing, sanctified love in the heart, all objects take their colors 
from it. As the color of the rainbow is in the reflected light 
of the sun, so the charm of goodness, of patience, of self-denial 
and heroism, of perseverance which holds on to the end, of 
bravery which endures, of energy which accomplishes, all 
take their bright and blessed hue from the disinterested love 
which is planted deep in the heart. Christ is the sun, afflic- 
tion is the prism, life is the dark background, and then the 
virtues break through the rain-drops, bright as the rainbow is 
bright, innumerable in their forms of beauty as the kaleido- 
scope changes its pictures. You have seen afflictions. For 
one so young, in the disappointment of bright plans, and in 
the agony of bright hopes, you have seen deep afflictions. But 
may you not say that the Lord has been merciful and gracious 
and full of compassion ? Is not His voice to you, ' In a little 
wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but in everlast- 
ing kindness will I have mercy upon thee, saith the Lord, thy 
Redeemer ' ? Affliction is like the summer-shower out of the 
stormy cloud. The cloud hides the sun and hides the beauties 
of the landscape. It is not pleasant to bear the shadows, 
the deformities, the discomforts, and the dangers of the rain. 
But there are greater distresses without the rain, and infinite 
compensations with the rain. There are days of brightness 
which will succeed the darkness; weeks of balmy and sum- 
mery warmth, which will make us forget the cold ; months of 
wonderful beauty which will outshine the eclipse ; years of 
happiness which will atone for discomforts ; defences against 
clanger which will shelter us through life. So affliction has its 
remunerations and compensations. The soul shall be far more 
brave to fulfil its duties. The future shall be far more bright 
because of the darkness. Eternity shall be far more joyous 
because of these blinding storms of sorrow, these evanescent 
clouds of mystery. God sits above the storm. Christ comes 
to us through the cloud. There is an ark that carries us over 
the billow. There is a haven of perfect rest, and we are has- 
tening thitherward." 



198 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

"March 4, 1878. 
"My Beloved N , — I will tell you what I have been read- 
ing for the last few weeks. Mainly the lives of holy men and 
holy women. I have within my reach Thackeray, Dickens, and 
George Eliot, but I turn from them all, having no relish what- 
ever for that sort of reading. The lives of Mary Van Lennep, 
Isabella Graham, Susan Allibone, William Goodell, and Archi- 
bald Alexander have a perfect enchantment for me. I seem 
to be walking and talking with the angels. Oh, how their 
lives, their consecration, their attainments, their final beati- 
tudes, delight me ! Rev. Dr. Alexander, the Shakespeare of the 
human heart ; Rev. Dr. Goodell, a strange mingling of sobrie- 
ties and comicalities, of human faults and saint-like glories ; 
Mrs. Van Lennep, more like the Evangeline of Longfellow, or 
the Madonna of the painters, than almost any other ; Mrs. Gra- 
ham, thrice-blessed saint and leader of youth to Christ, — I 
admire them all. These, and Rev. Dr. Shedd's Sermons, have 
been my meat and drink, spiritually, for many days." 

This extract is inserted as a single expression out of many, 
of the intense love he felt for his only living daughter, the one 
child God spared to him through life, and whose peculiar priv- 
ilege it was to be by his side and minister to his comfort in the 
few years of weakness and pain which yet remained to him. 

" I write now, though it must be a shorter letter, to give 
you renewed assurance that I gratefully remember your birth- 
day; that I deeply and tenderly love you. It seems but a day 
since I held you a babe in my arms, with tears of thanksgiving 
and joy, with palpitating hopes of future comfort and blessed- 
ness in your society and love. It seems impossible that so 
many years have passed. No other twenty years, no other ten 
years, nor even five, are likely to be given to me in this world. 
And now I wish to lay my trembling hand upon your youthful 
head, and in the name of all the past, and in the hope of all 
the future, to thank and to bless you. You have been to me 
a very dear, a very affectionate, a very precious child. Make 
the will of Christ supreme over all your thoughts and desires. 
Let it be your great and controlling inquiry always — 'What 
is right?' Cultivate these virtues, my beloved. Cherish a 
thoughtful and anxious deference to the opinions of others. 
Investigate all subjects of moral obligation with studious atten- 
tion. Judge for yourself of rules of duty, taking the Bible for 
your guide, and hold fast that which is good. I beseech you, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 199 



my dear child, never to forget that office and place, promotion 
and notoriety, do not constitute usefulness. You may be as 
honorable, and as happy, and as successful in leading souls to 
Christ in a quiet country parish, in a backwoods district 
school, in a restricted circle of plain, unpolished minds, as 
at the head of a female college. But I will not go on in this 
strain. I do not write this letter to instruct you with wisdom. 
I write to comfort and encourage you with sympathy, love, 
and hope." 

It had, perhaps, been well if Dr. Foster had broken away 
from his old trains of thought, and have ceased exercising 
his mind so constantly and intensely as he did in its old chan- 
nels. A physician in Jersey City, for whom he conceived a 
warm regard, told him he must read Cooper's novels, and live 
out-of-doors, and not think about a sermon for a year. But it 
was absolutely impossible for him to follow the advice. His 
next summer was spent in the residence of a former parishioner 
in West Springfield, while the family were absent in Europe, 
and there he found a full set of Cooper's novels. He faithfully 
set himself to read them, but after "wading," as he said, 
through one or two of them, he threw them down in disgust, 
and he sent word back to the physician that the task was im- 
possible, — the hardest he ever undertook. 

During this year of physical prostration, and of mental 
anxiety more hard to bear, the following letter from a highly- 
honored parishioner and valued friend was to him at just that 
time, as he expressed it, "worth its weight in gold." 

" In your letter you refer to some remarks of mine, compli- 
mentary to your labors and sermons. Those remarks were 
made in your absence, and I was not conscious of the presence 
of any member of your family, or of any one to report them to 
you. They were not said in flattery ; they were spoken from 
a sincere heart, in a spirit of entire truthfulness ; mainly de- 
signed to encourage the somewhat faltering hearts of our peo- 
ple, by calling their attention to their very great advantages, 
and the necessity, or rather duty, of duly appreciating them ; 
also, to awaken a feeling of gratitude to God, and of appre- 
ciation of your labors. However, I am not sorry that these 
remarks have been borne to your ears ; and now that they have, 



200 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



I have nothing to change or to modify. Your rank among the 
great preachers of New England, the enrolling of your name 
among the leading divines, whose names are so honored by the 
people, are secured. This is fait accompli, — your treasure is 
laid up where the moth and rust of time cannot corrupt it, and 
where no envious rival thief can break through and steal it. 
The great bulk of this wondrous accomplishment has been in 
the John-street Church, and among the worshippers there. 
The great benefit of this more than heroic achievement, this 
enduring life's work, accrues to the members of John-street 
congregation for the past twenty-five years. This great fact I 
wanted them to know and fully appreciate. As noble as your 
life has been in such an achievement, I desire, in the sweet 
confidence of pastor and people, to say that I especially honor 
you for your supreme consecration to your work, and your 
entire devotion to your position as the pastor and preacher of 
an evangelical congregation, and the simplicity, purity, and 
perfectness of your Christian character, as you have been for a 
quarter of a century in and out among us. No ad-captandam 
efforts, labors, or speeches, now upon the platform, now in the 
ward-room, again in Grand Army and soldier circles, anon in 
collections of Odd-Fellows, Masons, secret associations ; upon 
secular and semi-secular subjects ; no profanations of the Lord's 
day, by speeches of doubtful moral and religious influence, in 
Huntington Hall and elsewhere, for the applauses of popular, 
promiscuous, and mixed assemblies, have ever marked your 
career. Thank God for such a pastor ! Your strict confine- 
ment of your labors to your parish work, so natural to you, so 
consistent with your whole character, so beautiful, so admira- 
ble, so inconceivably potent in a parish in the city, and a com- 
munity, is why I love you, and why your people love and honor 
you. They may not know the secret of their love and esteem, 
but I have studied it, and I know it. I have never known you 
to wander at all out of the path of propriety and consistency, 
in any public remarks on any occasion. When you had a 
public task to perform, I have never feared that you would 
say an imprudent word, any single utterance that could be 
turned into a desire for the applauses of the vulgar, the pro- 
fane, the worldling. Your have been a minister of the Gospel. 
You have had the high standard, the grandeur of the work, 
the necessary purity and simplicity of example, of that char- 
acter ever before you. Or rather, I should say, these garments 
fit your native character, and have hung so gracefully and nat- 
urally upon you, that they seem to have been cut for you. 
This feature of your walk and ministry is your glory, and the 
great gift of John-street Church." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 201 

When this year of rest had come to an end, no material 
benefit had been received from it. It was plain at last that 
the faithful minister's life-work was ended. He could not 
again assume the duties which he had met so long and well. 
He must be free henceforth from all responsibilities. With 
great reluctance he prepared and sent in to his beloved church 
the following communication : — 

TO THE JoHN-STEEET CHURCH AND SOCIETY I 

"Dear Brethren and Friends, — I hereby resign my office as 
your associate pastor. I am led to this most painful step solely 
by ill health. Through your great generosity I have been absent 
from you more than a year, seeking rest and restoration. I 
come back disappointed of my hope. Disabilities and pains 
still oppress me, so that it is impossible for me to perform the 
ministerial service which you have a right to expect. The la- 
bors of this pastorate for twenty years have been to me a peren- 
nial spring of joy. I have been refreshed and quickened in the 
divine life by your presence in the sanctuary. I have been lifted 
up to Heaven by your prayers and songs of praise. I have been 
instructed, and in many a perplexing question of duty have been 
safely guided, by your manly thoughts and your counsels of 
wisdom. In the exigencies of my own life and of the life of 
my family, in times of sickness and bereavement, and in cir- 
cumstances of personal need, your sympathy and help have 
been opportune and abundant, and rendered with delicate ten- 
derness. In every Christian labor I have leaned upon you, and 
found you faithful and true. You have visited my infirmi- 
ties and defects with no harsh censures, with no withdrawal 
of confidence, with no coldness or indifference. From the 
depths of a grateful heart I thank you. I have occupied your 
pulpit one thousand Sabbaths, and have preached to you more 
than two thousand sermons. I have been with you in your 
homes and in your social gatherings, and have discussed with 
you literary themes, topics of national interest, points of per- 
sonal history and experience, striving to make all knowledge 
and all conversation bend to the salvation of the soul. I have 
been with you at weddings and at funerals, and have been per- 
mitted to carry your case to God, I trust with heavenly conso- 
lations in the house of mourning and with devout thanksgivings 
in the house of joy. I have sprinkled the waters of baptism 
on the brow of many of your children, and on the brow of a 
larger number of adults, and I cannot doubt that it has been 
14 



202 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

the sign of a divine regeneration. I have admitted to the 
church hundreds of this congregation, and with them and with 
original builders of this sacred organization, deeply honored 
and truly loved, I have broken the bread of communion. I 
expect to sit down with them at the banqueting supper of the 
Lamb. These labors cannot be relinquished, these ties cannot 
be broken, without bitter pangs of anguish. I beg of you to 
pardon my faults, and to give me your continued love and 
prayers. While my obligations as a pastor cease, while my 
claim of salary ceases, I hope to spend the small remnant of my 
days in your city, to remain a member of your church, to enjoy 
the privilege of worship with you, to maintain social rela- 
tions with you, to interest my mind as deeply as ever in your 
welfare, to render help so far as my strength allows in your 
religious meetings, to be buried, when I die, in your beautiful 
cemetery, where my children and my father sweetly slumber. 
I rejoice to leave your interests in the hands of the junior 
pastor, whom I greatly love, in whom I wholly confide, and 
with whom I believe the Spirit of the Lord richly dwells. 
"Your affectionate senior pastor." 

The people recognized his necessity, but desired to preserve 
the pastoral tie unbroken, and so by vote, in November, 1878, 
released him from all duties, and constituted him pastor emer- 
itus. At the same time they adopted resolutions warmly 
commendatory of his labors among them, and gave him and 
his family the use of a pew in the church forever. The 
church would gladly have made some provision for his sup- 
port, but its financial condition warranted no stated salary. 
However, a late parishioner, Mr. A. L. Brooks, long a tower 
of strength in the church, and one of his most valued friends, 
had made provision for an annuity of one hundred dollars 
yearly, to be paid him for ten years while he should live in 
Lowell. His people also freed his house from the small mort- 
gage still remaining on it ; and generous friends in his parish, 
outside the parish in the city, and outside the city among 
relatives and friends, remembered his needs, so that his abso- 
lute necessities were met, and according to the divine assur- 
ance, the righteous was not forsaken. 

Thus ended an active pastorate of more than twelve years, 
spent happily and usefully under disabilities of ill health, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 203 

against which a strong will and a thorough consecration made 
a gallant fight, but to which they were obliged at last to 
succumb. 

Dr. Foster was pastor of the John-street Church for twenty- 
one years and a half. During this time, 403 persons united 
with the church, 238 of these on profession of faith. Of the 
last years of this ministry, Hon. George Stevens, a parishioner, 
writes as follows : — 

"Whatever might have been thought by those who were 
strangers of the propriety or probable success of a second 
pastorate over the parish from which he, but a few years be- 
fore, had withdrawn, no one who knew Dr. Foster, knew the 
John-street people in their relations to him, and who knew 
the mutual relations of pastor and people during the first pas- 
torate, and the unanimity and thorough earnestness and cor- 
diality of the second call, would have for a moment doubted 
the wisdom and propriety of that call and its acceptance. N~o 
pastor and people ever more thoroughly loved each other than 
did Dr. Foster and his congregation, during the first pastorate. 
The separation was trying, and the love only slumbered during 
the intervening years ; it never died or decreased ; and when 
occasion offered, it rekindled with all its original intensity. 
The congregation recalled him as naturally as a family recalls 
its own head who has been temporarily away. John-street 
people were capable of great devotion to a pastor. Dr. Foster 
was capable of thorough love for, and appreciation of, his 
people. This devotion and this love existed in all their inten- 
sity, in spite of temporary separation, and by an inevitable 
necessity brought the parties together again in the dear old 
relation, as soon as circumstances permitted. 

"As the partiality of a true father leads him to regard his 
own children as superior to all others, so the nature of Dr. 
Foster made him regard and treat his own people as the dear- 
est and best on earth. I desire much to emphasize this feature 
of Dr. Foster's character, — his tendency to exalt and magnify 
the virtues of his own flock, and to overlook and forget en- 
tirely their imperfections. A small stream of affection, no 
matter how minute, from the heart of one of his own jjeople, 
reaching his soul, brought back a river of love from him. 
There came constantly from him a fulness and richness of 
affection and sympathy towards all and each one of his lov- 
ing people, that knew no stint or cessation. Every one knew 
that one grand loving heart was ever overflowing with benevo- 



204 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



lence for him. Every one felt, My pastor will be true to 
me, will shield and protect me if occasion requires ; no one can 
defame me in his presence; with him my weaknesses are all 
forgotten ; whatever others may say and think of me, he will 
befriend me, he will hide my faults. Tears have flowed from 
eyes of which he never knew, of which no one on earth ever 
knew, at the very thought of the shield of Dr. Foster's love. 
His affectionate nature, so sensitive, so responsive to the touch 
of gratitude and affection, so utterly unable to see faults in 
others, and in this so natural, unaffected, child-like, so grand 
and great in its simplicity, made himself and every one about 
him happy. 

" Has any one ever had a pastor who had the habit of grum- 
bling about his people, a disposition to magnify their faults, to 
style them a hard, ungrateful, and unkind people, to complain 
of their treatment? Then he knows how such a ministry 
withers, blights, belittles, and crushes a people ; how it embit- 
ters life, retards growth, dries up the fountains of peace and 
joy, engenders strife, disturbs the church, and dishonors God 
and religion. Everything that such a pastor is, Dr. Foster, in 
his second pastorate, was not. Everything that such a pastor 
is not, and cannot be, Dr. Foster was. This quality of his was 
very much the secret of his success, and of the abiding attach- 
ment for him. He was a retiring man, yet every young per- 
son, every child in his congregation, knew and felt that in his 
love they had more than a father. They loved him, they rever- 
enced him, because, as a pastor, he was more than a father. 

'"The same untiring industry and complete devotion to his 
work, the same elaborate and thorough preparation for pulpit 
services, the richness of eloquence, study of current events, 
interest in living men, marked his second as his first pastorate. 
His style as a writer and speaker was fixed. It was his own, 
unique and without imitators. With him it was original ; a 
part of himself ; it exactly fitted him ; it was his glory. None 
but one had Choate's style. There could be but one Choate 
as an orator. So among preachers, there could be no copying 
of Dr. Foster's style in the pulpit. His rhetoric was indeed 
gorgeous, but never too" gorgeous for him. The profusion of 
flowers only adorns the prairie. There they are native. Dr. 
Foster's rich exuberance of rhetorical display only showed 
forth in beautiful fitness. The grandeur of the thoughts and 
imagination of the man, — it never mastered him, he ever con- 
trolled it and made it his servant. Coming from him it ever 
seemed only a proper and fitting adornment of his logic, argu- 
ment, philosophy, and clearness of thought and statement. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 205 



"Dr. Foster was ever a great student, of living men. He 
knew, followed in their career, admired, and profited by, noble 
men contemporary with himself, whether clergymen, states- 
men, poets, literati, scholars, politicians, inventors, scientists, 
or railroad kings. All heroes, all successful men, in all call- 
ings, in all lands, were watched with an extraordinary interest 
by him, and the lesson of their lives was learned by him, and 
was stored away as part of his own rich mental furnishing. 
He was no imitator, but thoroughly appropriated what was 
valuable in the lives of great men. In our interviews he de- 
lighted to lead the conversation to a discussion of the men, 
measures, and movements of the times. Manliness, and the 
manifestation of heroic qualities, ever attracted and inspired 
him. 

" There was about Dr. Foster a constant adherence and 
devotion to great and true principles. On every occasion, on 
every subject, you could trust him to discern the great, the 
true, the good, and to adhere to and maintain them. His peo- 
ple never feared that at some unguarded moment he would 
say or do that which would bring a single touch of shame or 
dishonor or lessened dignity. Manliness was native to him. 
He had no ambition for transitory eclat ; no desire for applause 
at the risk of dignity, charity, truth, or prudence. All such 
praise he esteemed very dearly bought. 

" Dr. Foster, like all characteristic men, left his impress be- 
hind him. Many years must pass before he will fail from the 
memories of his people. His marked figure, features, voice, 
selfhood, all linger. Their influence still controls, aids, and 
guides men. The memories of his tender entreaties, his earn- 
est exhortations, his persuasive arguments, his loving, affec- 
tionate calls to wisdom, and obedience, can only die with the 
generation which was favored with his ministry ; and charac- 
ter will not fail to tell of him for centuries to come." 



IX.— As Pastor Emeritus at Lowell, Mass. 

1878 — 1882. 

In the fall of 1878, Dr. Foster, being released from all 
church duties, gave himself up to a quiet, contemplative life. 
He had no strength for any public care. He even felt unable 
to attend the ordinary religious meetings of the church. He 
cordially welcomed such friends as called upon him, and 



206 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

greatly enjoyed their visits, but was unequal to going into 
society. At first he hoped, and his friends hoped, that he 
might be able to supply vacant pulpits for one or more Sab- 
baths at a time. To one so well known and so welcome in all 
the pulpits of the region, and in a neighborhood where the 
churches were so many, there would have been no lack of 
opportunities of this character. But to his great disappoint- 
ment — for he loved nothing so much as to speak of Christ — 
he found himself completely exhausted whenever he attempted 
to preach, so that, after a few trials, he never entered a pulpit 
again. He touchingly describes his condition in these words : 

"Dear Brother W- , — I am sadly compelled to with- 
draw the promise and the hope of my being able to preach for 
my beloved John-street people during Mr. Seabury's vacation. 
The strongest motives impel me to make the attempt. My 
plans and hopes and aspirations and joys are all in the work 
of the ministry as much as forty years ago. It is a glorious 
service in which to live and work and die. The world will 
not understand why I am idle, and I shall suffer in the estima- 
tion of good men by my silence and inaction. Poverty and 
suffering stare my family in the face, if I cannot do something 
for their support, by preaching. Still, I can only say that I 
am worn to the edge of the grave. I am maintaining a daily 
fight with death, and every instance of severe study, of anx- 
iety, of excitement, of exposure, pushes me towards the dark 
abyss. I am not able to preach. Sleepless nights, pains in 
the spine, terrible headaches, frequent faintness and sinkings 
of strength, all admonish me that my remaining work is not 
to save the life of others, but to fit myself to die. And yet, if 
after this long struggle through the dark wilderness of sick- 
ness and sorrow, God should give to me, as he did to Heze- 
kiah, fifteen years more of work for his blessed cause, or ten 
years, or five years, or one year, I should count it an infinite 
privilege. But for the present I must still lay by my oar, lean 
over the boat, and, mingling my tears with the salt brine, watch 
the changing tide. Twenty-two months ago I left Lowell to 
seek rest and restoration. After nine months' silence I preached 
for my son one Sabbath. The effort threw me back, most sen- 
sibly and most painfully, into my state of nervous exhaustion 
and suffering. Again I rested four months, and then attempted 
to preach two sermons in West Springfield, two sermons in 
Northampton, and one sermon in the Memorial Church, Spring- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 207 

field. The result was disastrous. I returned to Lowell in 
October last. Since then I have preached once in John-street 
pulpit, once in Kirk-street, and delivered my address at the 
fortieth anniversary of our church. In each and every case, 
my throbbings of the head, and of the related nerves, have 
come back upon me like a troop of inveterate and armed foes." 

The last occasion during his life on which he came before 
the public, is referred to in the foregoing note, the fortieth 
anniversary of the organization of the John-street Church. 
On that occasion he made a short, but deeply interesting and 
tender address. He closed it with a reference to himself and 
his colleague, of such beauty and pathos, as to affect deeply 
all who heard it.* 

After this he kept his house more and more closely, occa- 
sionally walking out, but more frequently, if he needed the 
air, working in his garden or sawing wood, or, if he desired 
other recreation, shutting himself up in an attic chamber com- 
manding a fine view of the distant country, and occupying 
himself with his books and papers. 

He was urged by friends to prepare some of the large accu- 
mulations of his past years of toil for the press. Many thought 
that valuable books, not only some of a theological and devo- 
tional character, but others, pertaining to politics, biography, 
and education, might be prepared and given to the public, 
which should be not only a means of good, but the source of 
a much-needed revenue. He went so far as to plan some of 
these works, and made a beginning in arranging them. But 
he found himself utterly unequal to the task. He had not 
strength to apply himself sufficiently, and, besides, he was so 
completely disheartened, that nothing he had written seemed 
worthy of preservation. But his feelings on the matter are 
best understood from a letter of his to a beloved and honored 
parishioner. 

"My Dear Friend, — When A. was here he urged upon me 
suggestions heretofore made, that I should go into the book 

* Quoted in Dr. Street's address, which is given on subsequent pages. 



208 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

market with some of my wares ; and he asked me to give him 
subjects on which I had preached or lectured, with some de- 
gree of system and harmony, so as to form a connected series 
of addresses. I gave him ten or twelve topics which I had 
thus treated, imperfectly, indeed, but at sufficient length to 
make a moderate volume. He writes me that he showed the 
list to you, and gave you reason to think that I might publish. 
I fear that he has awakened expectations and hopes which can 
never be realized. The programme was jotted down in an 
excited and sanguine state of my mind, at the opposite pole 
of my usual moods, partly to refresh my own memory of what 
I had written, partly to gratify him with a more definite view 
of the labors of my life. Alas, alas ! I am wholly unequal to 
the task of revision, reconstruction, emendation, transcription, 
proof-reading, rejection of feeble thought, tilling in of vacan- 
cies, enlargement of partial views, new evidences where proofs 
are insufficient to satisfy cavilers. The writing out of my 
fortieth anniversary address cost me days and weeks of pain. 
If I write half a day I am rendered well-nigh helpless by spinal 
agony, so that for hours I cannot stand erect. I would most 
gladly meet the wishes of my generous and noble-minded 
friends, in the matter of publishing some of my sermons, but I 
am a wilted leaf, and there is no strength in me." 

After his death his family searched among his papers for 
familiar sermons and addresses, work that had been widely and 
warmly commended, and to their great grief could find only a 
small portion of the large accumulation of years. In his ex- 
cessive self-depreciation he must have destroyed a large pro- 
portion of what he had written. 

In these last days he wrote but few letters. His correspond- 
ence with his son almost ceased. His wife and daughter 
were always at his side, and wrote for him whenever nec- 
essary. He had little occasion, and, in his great feebleness, 
still less courage to write. When, however, he did put pen to 
paper, there was no diminution in the fertility and beauty of 
his thought. What he wrote showed as keen an interest in 
public matters and in religious thought, and as sharp a com- 
prehension of their import, as had his writings in the past. 
Although disease had fastened itself with fierce and cruel 
fangs upon his body, his mind remained unimpaired. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 209 



A number of extracts from his letters are here subjoined, 

arranged chronologically. 

"January 1, 1879. 
"My Dear A — — , — The ministry is to me just as sublime 
and beautiful and attractive a work as ever. All my longings 
are for it ; all my delights, intellectual, literary, social, even 
physical, turn towards it. I have tried to get my mind out of 
theological ruts, to use Dr. H.'s term, — thanks to his generous 
heart and penetrating mind. But after all, I am compelled to 
say that theological ruts are to me the king's highway, and 
more easy and joyful roads than any other. I count them 
more elegant, more soul-replenishing, more health-quickening 
than any novel or history or exploration or newspaper or 
scientific essay or poetic imagination or political ratiocination 
or jubilant song. It is harder for me to break out from the- 
ology than for the lawyer to forsake his courts, or the doctor 
his patients, or the captain his ships, or the musician his piano, 
or the Hindoo his rice. Oh, sweet and heavenly and life-giv- 
ing and soul-saving theology, how can I leave thee ? " 

"December 17, 1879. 
" My Dear Wife, — I have been wondering much why it is 
that my inclinations lead me to emigrate to the south with the 
birds, and yours lead you to emigrate to the north with the 
foxes. And I am led to inquire, which is the best model to 
imitate, those creatures which, with fur on their noses, burrow 
in the ground, or those nobler specimens which with light in 
their eye soar high in the air? I am thankful to D. and H. 
for their kind invitation to me to visit them. Their society is 
a delight and an instruction and a heavenward influence, car- 
rying me upward, as on eagle's wings. The society of their 
children is suggestive to me constantly of knowledge and 
strength, of beauty and grace, of integrity and usefulness, of 
the pleasures of hope and the anticipations of nobleness which 
run forward far into the future with swift and eager feet. But 
I cannot go to Winchendon because, as you well understand, 
I am a helpless, hopeless, and wretched invalid. The grass- 
hopper is a burden ; the shaking of a leaf in my sight is like 
the assault of an army; the slamming of a door is like a 
thunder-bolt out of the sky; a change of weather from warm 
to cold, or the exposure to northern breezes and drifting snows, 
strikes through me with a deathly chill. My heart is with my 
friends. My love, my thanks, my anxious devisings, and my 
prayers are sentinels around their pathway all the time. But 
my bodily presence is feeble and is not transportable. One 



210 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



thing I do desire. As the prospect of my preaching again to 
a church and people, whom I can call my own, fades into the 
dimness of a deep uncertainty, I long for a little spot of land, 
five acres or two, near to D., or near to A. (either proximity 
would fill me with joy), where in the week I could labor 
enough to cast off the horrible torpor of my frame, and on the 
Sabbath could preach occasionally, and when I did not preach, 
could hear the preaching of my own beloved kindred. 

" Esquire S. has brought to me Cook's Biology and the Prince- 
ton Review and the Bibliotheca Sacra. For weeks to come, 
if God shall grant me freedom from pain, so that I can pursue 
consecutive thinking, I shall feast on metaphysics and the nat- 
ural sciences and the profound philosophy of religion. There 
are no themes of study which interest me more truly, though 
latterly my brain trembles and sinks down overwrought, when- 
ever I attempt to wrestle with these great difficulties. Gladly 
would I forget my meat and my drink, my exercise and my 
play, my sleep and my pleasure, if I could give myself pain- 
lessly and uninterruptedly to McCosh of Princeton, Porter 
of Yale, Bowen of Harvard, Flint of Edinburgh, Caird of 
Glasgow, and Bain of Aberdeen, not to speak of Jevons and 
Morell and Cousin and Schopenhauer. Oh, glorious hour, 
when all these marvellous problems shall be opened to the eye 
in the spiritual world, more bright, more beautiful, more easy 
of understanding, than the charms of a summer landscape in 
the radiance of the morning sun! I am very sorry for H. ; 
my warmest sympathy and love wait upon him. Kev. Dr. 
Nathaniel Taylor was broken off three times, by ill health, 
from his college life. Nevertheless he persevered with a noble 
resolution ; graduated with honor ; became the amanuensis of 
Dr. Dwight ; surpassed his master in theological reasonings ; 
trained one thousand young men for the ministry; has per- 
vaded New England with his thought ; will be followed by the 
praises of tens of thousands in eternity. I trust B. will not 
strain the bow, nor shoot the arrow beyond a healthful flight." 

"December 28, 1879. 

"My Beloved A , — It has been well-nigh impossible for 

me to answer your last two very kind letters. I have begun 
to write a dozen times and have been compelled to desist. My 
mind has been tossed in tempestuous surges of perplexity, un- 
certainty, anxiety, doubt, and fear. To determine the future 
of my short life — my place, my work, my responsibility, my 
duty — has been more difficult than to choose a profession, a 
wife, a settlement, a residence, or a system of labor, in any of 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 211 



the past years. Suppose I live to be eighty, as my father did, 
or eighty-nine, as Deacon Pinneo did, receiving at the hands 
of God fifteen or twenty or twenty-five years more of earthly 
existence, where shall I spend it, and how? Shall I live as I 
am now living, from hand to mouth, struggling for health and 
strength, and struggling in vain? Shall I give occasion to a 
scoffing world and to misjudging Christians to say, ' There 
goes your loafing, superannuated, useless, and worthless minis- 
ter ' ? Shall I push out, before I have any consciousness of 
restored strength or permanent endurance, and try to preach, 
and plunge myself once more into the abysses of suffering 
feebleness ? I have been seeking for a regimen which would 
fit me once more for work in the ministry. With as single an 
eye and with as eager a desire as ever I cherished in the be- 
ginning of my ministry, or in my theological preparations, I 
have sought to renew my strength for ministerial duties. My 
enforced idleness has not been from the love of idleness, but 
purely and only for physical restoration. An overworked 
brain, intensity of emotion, and nervous prostration, have 
brought me where I am. I have felt that three things were 
essential to my recovery, — 1, restful quiet of mind; 2, out- 
door air ; 3, agreeable exercise ; and that drugs and medicines 
could not help me. What shall I do ? I hate to be a cum- 
berer of God's earth. I hate to be an idle sluggard in the 
vineyard of my Lord, — a broken implement, covered with 
rust and cast aside, when the harvest is wide and the grain is 
ripe and more sickles are earnestly called for. I hate to be a 
miserable valetudinarian, listless and contemptible, a burden to 
my children and a burden to the church. I hate to be cut off 
from the immeasurable privileges of Sabbath worship and of 
Christian fellowship in the wonderful religious convocations 
and religious activities of the day. You cannot imagine the 
greatness of my affliction. God grant you never may know it 
by experience." 

In the summer of 1880, through the kindness of his people, 
he spent three weeks with his wife and daughter in the com- 
pany of his beloved brother, Rev. Davis Foster, at Harwich- 
port, Mass. This was his last experience by the sea. He 
occupied those happy days, as was his delight, in fishing and 
in watching the ocean. Every day he was accustomed to walk 
upon the beach, and once or twice, by great effort, he went 
out with friends after blue-fish. 



212 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

Immediately after this vacation the American Board met in 
Lowell, and though Dr. Foster was unable to attend any of 
the meetings, — a deprivation which was a great affliction, — 
yet he keenly enjoyed entertaining at his house a large num- 
ber of old friends, kindred, and others, who came to be present 
at the services. Though there were but a few days left him 
upon earth, yet his interest in everything that had occupied 
his thought in active life was as intense as ever. 

From letters written the same fall we make the following 
extracts : — 

"November 9, 1880. 

" Some think that the modern ministry goes much beyond 
the last generation ; some think otherwise. I incline to this 
opinion, viz. that every century has its own qualities of char- 
acter, marks of power, strains of eloquence, and it is given to 
only one in about ten thousand of each age, to make an im- 
pression on the public mind which is deep and lasting. 

"I respond most heartily to your patriotic sentiment in 
favor of Garfield. We have now secured, in my judgment, 
the most perfect president, the most complete and rounded 
character, we have ever had in the chief-magistrate's chair. 
It is a great thing for a man to stand higher than Washington 
or Lincoln. Equalling them in high-toned courage; in sim- 
plicity and integrity and truthfulness ; in self-forgetful devo- 
tion to country ; in his knowledge of men ; in his knowledge 
of political principles ; in his earnest, intelligent trust in God ; 
he surpasses them both, in scholarship, in genius, and in elo- 
quence. I think him the first intellect of America, as Glad- 
stone is the first of England; as Guizot was of France; as 
John Winthrop was of Massachusetts Bay. The war has 
done for us one marvellous thing : it has given us a succession 
of superb, unequalled j)residents, — Lincoln, Garfield, Grant, 
Hayes; we have had no others like them during the cen- 
tury. Contrast them with Buchanan, Pierce, Johnson, Tyler. 
The chasm between them is wider and deeper than the cataract 
of Niagara, or the canon of the Colorado. I have been read- 
ing the twelfth and last volume of J. Q. Adams's life. His 
character is more faulty than I supposed. He is unjustly and 
even fiercely severe upon almost every public man of his time. 
With the noblest ethical wisdom and the highest political elo- 
quence, he combines some of the strangest and meanest bursts 
of personal bitter vituperation that I ever read. It would be 
just as impossible, it seems to me, for Garfield to hold such a 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 213 

pen and write such philippics, as for St. Paul to write Paine' s 
Age of Reason. Thank God for some improvement in our 
political history ! 

"I have been unrolling my bundle of papers on 'Woman's 
Character and Mission.' I have reviewed a large number of 
excerpts and essays on her rights and her wrongs ; her work 
in the home, in literature, in civil government, in great reforms ; 
in spreading abroad benevolence, purity, simplicity, tenderness, 
moral courage, intellectuality, religious consecration,— silently, 
like the dews of night; unseen, like the electricity of the tele- 
graphic wire ; refreshing, like the flow of the meadow-brook 
in the grass; diffusive, like the vapors of the ocean ; powerful, 
like the wind, or the tide, or the cloud, or the river, or the sun- 
shine. Give me time, give me health, give me brains (I have 
already the enthusiasm), and I would write a volume on Wo- 
man's sphere and destiny and unconscious influence, which 
would wake up the sleepers. ' Subjection of woman to man,' 
as Mill describes it ? No ; subjection of both man and woman 
to truth and love, and the great law of holy service. ' Reform 
against nature,' as Bushnell has it? No; reform with nature, 
with Scripture, with science, with the consenting voice of all 
the good, with Christ the Sacrifice as brother and friend, with 
the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier, as helper, with a Father omnipo- 
tent, as ever-present guardian." 

"November 17, 1880. 

" A fifth article is by Edward Everett Hale, of Boston, on 
the ' Insincerity of the Pulpit.' It is ingenious and acute, ap- 
pealing to common prejudices, and powerful in its use of the 
language and the prepossession of the people. But it is all a 
sophism, built on false premises. The first half of his paper 
attempts to show that the preacher should not refer to skep- 
tical doubts in his sermons. He should not give evidences nor 
reasons nor arguments. The pulpit is not the place for that 
sort of writing. Let him state what he thinks, what he believes, 
what he knows, plain propositions of ethics, of morals, of duty, 
of experience, and let disputed points alone. Then Mr. Hale 
flops. The last half of his paper is a sneer at the orthodox 
pulpit ; because, as he asserts, it is insincere ; it proclaims what 
it does not know or believe ; it states, from the guarded desk, 
what it would not dare to state in the parlor to a man of 
thought and science ; it does not give evidences nor reasons 
nor arguments. Now I affirm most unqualifiedly and most 
earnestly that Mr. Hale is mistaken. The evangelical pulpit 
of this republic has been most remarkably characterized by its 



214 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



great argumentative power. More than in any other country, 
it has dwelt on Christian evidences, scientific facts, historic 
deductions, metaphysical arguments, profound reasonings. It 
has not neglected virtues and morals and the multiform duties 
of society. It has mingled practice with doctrine, making the 
personal application all the way. It has built its appeals on 
the eternal verities of nature, of science, of history, of con- 
sciousness, of the revelation, and has not been simply hortatory 
and sensational. I appeal to the names which are illustrious 
in the annals of the American pulpit. In the Presbyterian 
church, Davies, Alexander, Barnes, H. B. Smith, Hodge, Pat- 
ten, Wm. Adams, McCosh, Griffin, Shedd, Richardson. In the 
Dutch Reformed Church, Bethune, Schaff, Harbaugh, Hartranft, 
Taylor Lewis. In the Baptist church, Wayland, Williams, 
Hackett, Robinson, Sears. In the Methodist church, Olin, 
Durbin, Simpson, Jaynes. In the Congregational church, Ed- 
wards, Emmons, D wight, Lyman Beecher, N. Taylor, Park, 
President Hopkins, R. S. Storrs, Jeremiah Day, President 
Woolsey, President Appleton, President Marsh, President 
Bartlett, President Nott. Where can you begin to find among 
those of unevangelical faith such a company of reasoners, or 
such a combined and accumulated amount of strong, unan- 
swerable argument and evidence ? Nowhere, nowhere ; it 
does not exist." 

" I have been reading the sermons of Phillips Brooks. I am 
strongly impressed by them. Some compare him to Robertson. 
I think he goes far beyond Robertson in natural expositions of 
scripture and evangelical tone of doctrine. He is to be ranked 
in the order of high, profound, reverent thinkers, like John 
Hall, William M. Taylor, Austin Phelps, Jacob Manning, Dr. 
Duryea. He has great intensity, concentration of argument, 
overwhelming pathos, outbursts of tenderness and devotion." 

"May 26, 1881. 

"My Dear JV- , — Your father and mother have been at 

work all the forenoon sowing blossoming seeds, transplanting 
plants from pots and flowers from borders, striking out two 
circles of eschscholtzias and portulacas, making a semi-square 
of geraniums, forming a wall of beauty around three fourths 
of the circle, placing a lantana and a blue-bell in the centres of 
the circles. Alas, how soon flowers wither, and leaves fall, and 
hopes of youth and manhood decay ! He builds too low who 
builds beneath the skies. Neither flowers nor fruits, nor gold 
nor gems, nor praises nor honors, nor luxuries nor comforts, 
can fill the hungry soul. The pear blossoms are gone, and the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 215 



young pears are pushing ahead their growth, like lions for their 
prey, or rather like lambs, eager to be eaten. O for the three 
dear Dayton children, who were here last summer, lovers of 
pears, and beloved by the owners of pears ; if they were pres- 
ent, how gladly would I train the luscious and the succulent 
fruit for their pleasure and their health ! The apples are giv- 
ing promise of a medium harvest. One bushel of Baldwins, 
four bushels of Greenings, two bushels of Astrachans, I think, 
will be gathered. If I had eight or nine or twelve children to 
sit around my hearth-stone in the winter, and eat apples and 
crack nuts and tell stories and pinch their father's ears, I 
should have a much deeper complacency in my trees and wish 
their number increased. 

"This is my birthday, and many grateful thoughts and some 
mournful reminiscences come crowding into the telescope of 
my reflections, and, like the stars, they shine more vividly in 
the telescope than to the natural eye. I recall my mother, 
blessed, faithful, indefatigable, full of trust, of hope, of prayers, 
ever multiplying her toils for her children. If she had lived 
she would be now ninety-five years old. Twenty-seven years 
has she been in heaven, while I have been struggling on, in 
toils without number or rest, in despondencies without mitiga- 
tion or change. It will be a joyful hour if I ever meet her in 
a land where there are no clouds nor storms nor night nor sea. 
My memories of Henniker are very dear, where I first went in 
the sweet month of June, flowers in my eye and hopes in my 
soul. One such friendship as that of Mr. and Mrs. C. is 
enough to pay for a pastorship of six years, with all its weari- 
ness and painfulness, its burdensome responsibilities and great 
labors. There A. and E. were born, and first filled the hearts 
of their father and mother with an undying thankfulness. 
Our hearts go back to Pelham, and there two angels seem to 
be walking by our side, — they are angels now, but we called 
them then Charles and Edward. My memories of West 
Springfield are very dear. The friends there surrounded me 
with sustaining strength, with exhilarating hopes, with spirit- 
ual delights, for which gold could be no exchange. My mem- 
ories of Lowell are very dear ; but I will not enter upon that 
theme; it is inexhaustible." 

"June 7, 1881. 

"We are living in an age of false, dangerous, treacherous 
Liberalism. The drift is tremendous towards all forms of 
heterodoxy, irreligion, and bold, subtle, plausible theories of 
infidelity. It is seen in secular papers and in religious papers. 



216 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



It is seen in controversies now going on, about Robertson 
Smith of Edinburgh. There is no anchor of faith, and the 
wind drives. There is no accepted standard of truth, and the 
vane turns. In politics, in business, in schools, in art, in liter- 
ature, in authorship, there are established principles ; there 
are changeless and enduring laws of truth and right ; and woe 
to the adventurous speculator who ignores them ! I believe 
that God has given a changeless and an eternal law in religion, 
more, far more, than in any other department of thought or 
action. That law is in the Bible; I hope that you and I will 
stand by it till we die. 

" I have read and re-read portions of Dr. Hodge's Theology. 
They are instructive and weighty and eloquent and true, but 
rather too scientific for my present state of mind, seeking for 
practical improvement, rather than for evidence to satisfy 
doubt. You ask for some information about Tom Corwin. 
He was the ' Wagon-boy ' of Ohio, as far-famed as Henry Clay, 
the ' Mill-boy of the Virginia Slashes ' ; or as N". P. Banks, the 
' Bobbin-boy ' of Waltham ; or as James A. Garfield, the 
' Towpath-boy ' of the Reserve. Mr. Corwin had an intuitive 
discernment and power of eloquence, as much as Patrick 
Henry or John B. Gough or Dwight L. Moody, and where 
that native genius is found, it goes beyond all scholarship and 
art. Tom Corwin made a speech in Congress on the Mexican 
War, which will live in the annals of eloquence as long as any 
speech of Webster or Choate. I would take a journey of a 
hundred miles, or fast two days in the week, or go without a 
new suit of clothes, to hear such eloquence. We have a great 
deal of public speaking which is feeble, but when you listen to 
such a man as Corwin on a serious and weighty theme, it is 
a sublime and incomprehensible power, like the crash of thun- 
ders or the music of the sea. 

" Please tell Mr. Warren, when you see him, that I should 
be glad to hear DeWitt Clark and William Warren and Addi- 
son Foster sing ' Johnny Schmoker ' once more. # I think it 
would cheer my disconsolate heart. I should like also to at- 
tend a Sabbath day's crowded services of three sermons, — 
one by Mr. Warren, one by Mr. Clark, one by my son ; the 
more protracted these discourses, the better. I should be lifted 
up by them above earthly cares, and should go in the strength 
of them the rest of my short life. I have been reviewing 
some books of biography to refresh my memory of important 

* Keferring to happy vacation days by the sea-shore when the three 
were students. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 217 



events and to deepen my spiritual convictions. I have looked 
over the lives of Chas. Hodge, Henry B. Smith, J. Addison 
Alexander, Bela B. Edwards, C. G. Finney (five theological 
professors) ; of John Todd, Edward N. Kirk, Henry Martyn, 
John Newton, Thomas Scott (five holy men of the present 
century and the past) ; of Mary Lyon, Harriet Newell, Henri- 
etta Hamlin, Mary Somerville, Maria Leycester Hare (five 
women whose martyr-like consecration to duty has quickened 
the spiritual life of the church of Christendom). I do not 
mean that I have re-read carefully the whole, but I have re- 
newed the sacred impressions, the delightful relish, the upward 
aspiration and resolve. These books are to me beyond price. 
They furnish a feast, both for intellect and soul, for the joy of 
this life and for the praises of heaven. When I am longing 
for mental enlargement, for spiritual elevation, for more of a 
Christ-like benevolence, and for a higher power of evangelizing 
influence, these books become to me a divine vehicle of 
thought, a powerful means of grace." 

"Lowell, June 20, 1881. 

"My Dear N- , — I have written, since my birthday, to 

A., to S., to D. I have begun to reconstruct five or six ser- 
mons. But my pen is not equal to the effort. My head 
becomes a spinning-top, screwing out dismal sounds and dis- 
mal pains. I am like the aeronaut, who rose in a balloon last 
week from Boston. He rose successfully, but the wind soon 
started him seaward, and he was compelled swiftly and meekly 
to take a more lowly place. Rev. Dr. B. once told me I was 
off on the tops of the mountains all the way from the begin- 
ning of a sermon or a speech to the end, that I needed to come 
down and walk in the valleys more. I guess my friends will 
now admit that I walk in the valleys sufficiently. 

"We are full of anxiety, in these outlying territories of the 
Republic, about the relations of Garfield to Conkling, about 
the backward steps of the Lowell aldermen in the temperance 
cause, about the cold which blights the fruit-trees and the corn, 
about the Revised Version, if one half or two thirds of its 
changes prove to be unnecessary, etc. etc. It seems, at this 
present writing, as if Conkling would split the Republican 
party into two unequal parts, irreconcilable and unforgiving, 
thus recklessly throwing the next administration into the hands 
of the Democrats. Our city government has voted for license ; 
the flood-gates are opened ; an inundation worse than that of 
the Wabash and Miami valleys is at hand. Drunkards go reel- 
ing along River Street. Our washer-woman says her husband 

15 



218 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

brought home his store-bill the other day. It was, for lager, 
$28 (!) ; for food, $2 (!). So the world goes, and the appe- 
tites of the multitude bind them in galling and debasing 
chains. I think it very probable that we shall have contro- 
versy and religious schism on the subject of the New Testament. 
Mr. Talmage thinks the New Version is an impertinence ; Mr. 
Potter thinks it is a strong support of Rationalism ; Mr. Scher- 
merhorn thinks it is a Unitarian Bible ; the Universalists claim 
it as their friend. It will become the fountain, I fear, of sar- 
casm, cavil, angry debate, and theological hatred. God can 
bring marvelous blessings out of apparent evil. Amid all 
agitations, collisions, infidelities, mistakes of the good, antipa- 
thies of the wicked, the Bible, will endure and will conquer." 

The following is to a brother who had at the time two 
sons in college, in whose welfare Dr. Foster took the keenest 
interest. The young men referred to were then on a vacation. 
It shows that his anxiety for his country had not a whit 
diminished. 

"August, 1881. 

" Dear Brother, — I wish I could be with the boys camping 
out on the coasts of Maine, shooting partridges in the forest, 
hooking big cod on the briny wave, breathing the balsamic 
airs of stately pines, only I am afraid of woodchucks and 
wood-lice, snakes and red ants, hard boards (to sleep on) and 
rain-storms, black flies and mosquitoes. I think they will have 
a good time. I hope they will lay in lots of health, wisdom, 
courage, cheerfulness, and high aims. 

" The shot that hit Garfield may be the political death of 
Conkling, — I hope it will. But it is the most alarming and 
atrocious event of the century. If an assassin may choose 
our ruler, we are near the end of Republicanism. If any 
scalawag from the slums of the city, or any born devil from 
dens of murderers, or any tool of vile political factions, may 
put a man in the Presidential chair, we are lost. Better abolish 
the Vice-Presidency; better remand a new election to the peo- 
ple ; better call a convention of Governors of States ; better 
give the choice at once to the House of Representatives, — than 
this fearful mal-adjustment of the Vice-Presidency." 

The first two of the following extracts are to his daughter, 
the last to his son. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 219 

"Lowell, July 8, 1881. 

"My Dear N'- , — We are greatly anxious to have you 

come home. We love you very dearly, and we are very lonely. 
It is like living in Nova Zembla, without sun, or fire, or April 
showers, or may-flowers, or republican government, or Chris- 
tian institutions, or sugar for our tea, or butter for our pears. 
Please come home as soon as you can. Since President Gar- 
field was shot, and, as we fear, mortally wounded, republics 
seem a folly, the world a Pandemonium, and life and every 
blessing a transient possession to be ruthlessly destroyed by 
any villanous assassin. Our politics are in a deplorable con- 
dition, when the rage of faction can stir up such blind and 
fiend-like malignity. If God has mercy in store for our nation, 
and if prayers can save an invaluable life, Garfield will live. 
Ten thousand thousand wrestling supplications, in closets and 
families and Christian assemblies, are offered for him daily. 
If Garfield dies, I know not what commotions, hatreds, 
violences, and revolutions are before us. It is the last time 
that an assassin will be permitted to choose the chief magis- 
trate of the nation." 

"My Dear A , — How are you edified by the swift suc- 
cession of learned and ecclesiastical councils, — Schools of 
Philosophy at Concord, Schools of Science in Boston, Schools 
of Episcopalianism at Newton, Schools of Unitarianism at 
Saratoga, etc. etc.? Dr. Bellows thinks theology will soon be 
formed and demonstrated only by reason and common-sense. 
There was considerable reason and common-sense in Athens, 
in Rome, among the Encyclopedists of France, and the Ideolo- 
gists of Germany, and the Transcendentalists of America, but 
when did they produce a Bible, or a divine plan of redemption, 
or a life like that of Christ, or a republic like the United 
States, or an accomplished reform like that of Luther, or an 
incontrovertible and consistent system of doctrine like that of 
Edwards? Rev. Mr. C. thinks that the ' sweet graces of the 
cradle and the life-juices of tender love' were absent from 
Puritanism. He evidently is infantile in his education. He 
has not read the beautiful and pathetic story of Winthrop and 
his wife Margaret, of Bradford and Mrs. Southworth, of John- 
son and the Lady Arabella, of Peregrine White, and several 
others." 

During these years the relation between him and his people 
was one of sincere interest and love. He could not be present 
at their meetings, but they understood the feebleness that 



220 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

necessitated his absence, and were certain of his sympathy and 
prayers. His anxieties in their behalf are indicated in a letter 
in which he urges a parishioner to accept the office of super- 
intendent of the Sabbath-school. 

"My Dear /Sir, — Permit me to express a strong desire 
that you should accept the superintendency of the Sabbath- 
school. Your power of logical thought and of Bible interpre- 
tation, your skill in the practical application of truth, your 
singular aptness to teach, fit you, as few are fitted, for this 
work. I know the burden of responsibility, I know the crowd 
of work that presses upon you in your profession. If you feel 
that you can carry the added load, God's grace, I believe, will 
give you added strength. The church and the congregation 
are in full sympathy with you. You will be a leader of souls 
through the gates of salvation and of song. As pastor emeri- 
tus, as pastor moriturus, I trust not as a forgetful pastor, I 
watch from my retirement the progress of affairs, feeliDg as 
intense a longing as ever in my life for John-street prosperity 
and John-street unity, and I have seen no signs of the times 
more auspicious than this movement. 

"Very affectionately yours." 

Another letter written about the same time shows how sin- 
cerely, even in the enforced retirement of his feebleness, he 
was interested in the welfare of his people, how deeply he 
sympathized with them in their troubles, and how greatly he 
desired to do them good. This letter was addressed to one 
who had grown up from childhood under his eye, and who for 
years had been confined at home in helplessness and pain. 

" My Dear Miss , — May I tell you that my most anx- 
ious sympathies have been awakened on your behalf? All the 
members of my parish have been dear to me. All the iambs 
of my flock have been carried in the arms of my prayers to 
Christ. Still, when one has suffered as you have suffered, I 
cannot repress my tears. When one of the dear youth for 
whom I have so often planned and studied, is laid aside in 
loneliness, in daily and nightly pain, in mental depression, I am 

deeply moved by emotions of sorrow. Miss called last 

night and spoke of your case with great sensibility and affec- 
tionateness. I spend the hours of this beautiful Sabbath 
morning in thoughts of you and in prayer for you. While the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 22l 



assembly of God's people are worshipping in His house, I im- 
plore the infinite tenderness and grace of Christ and His divine 
support for you. I send you a card which suggests some con- 
solations for one who is prostrate in weakness and in distress. 

" Life is full of mysteries, but oh, my dear friend, lean on 
the bosom of Jesus, pour out your prayer into His ear, and 
mysteries and sorrow and anguish shall ilee away as the clouds 
are driven by the rising sun. God's mercies and His most ten- 
der regard are shown in pain as well as in comfort, in losses as 
well as in the possession of dearest objects. Distresses teach 
us our dependence. Afflictions lead us to the Cross. 

"The farmer cuts down the forest and seems to have made 
a wide devastation of leafy and flowery beauty. So earthly 
disappointments lay waste our hopes, our strength, our life. 
But the farmer's field shall soon be cleared of stumps and logs 
and brush and rubbish, and a most beautiful harvest of grain 
shall be reaped. So our wasted life, hacked, mutilated, de- 
formed, destroyed by the feller's axe, by sickness, by sorrow, 
and by death, shall blossom again with inimitable and ever- 
lasting beauty in the garden of the Lord above. You are 
the Saviour's care; you have been redeemed by His blood; 
your sufferings enlist His loving compassion. He is ready to 
forgive your sins. He will wash away the stains of guilt and 
erase the handwriting of ordinances. He loves you as much 
as He loved Lazarus when He raised him from the grave, or 
Peter when He looked upon him with that expression of ut- 
most tenderness, or Mary when she sat at His feet and chose 
the heavenly treasure. He sends you pains, that he may break 
your heart in penitence and holy trust. He points to His own 
bleeding wounds, that He may fill your longing soul to the 
very brim with patience and submission, with love, joy, and 
peace, with renunciation of earth and self, with antepasts of 
heaven. 

"With affectionate sympathy, with importunate prayer, I 
leave you in the hands of that divine Friend who has given 
you tokens of His love beyond all earthly love and earthly care. 

" Your true friend and former pastor." 

A word should be said of the relations of Dr. Foster to Mr. 
Seabury. For more than three years Mr. Seabury was asso- 
ciate pastor with him, and for four years afterwards, while 
Dr. Foster dwelt among the people, took all the responsibili- 
ties of the pastorate. Not every ex-pastor, and much less a 
senior pastor, has the grace given him to make the position of 



222 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

his younger brother in the ministry easier. It is hard for one 
who has been in the habit of standing at the head and directing 
affairs, to yield precedence to another, and to see his ways set 
aside for others. Human nature in the ministry, no less than 
in other men, tempts one to jealousies and disparagements. 
And in fairness it should be added that not every successor of 
a previous minister has the grace given him to listen with 
equanimity to the praises of one who has gone before him, or 
always remembers to treat the resident ex-pastor with the re- 
spectful consideration which such a man ordinarily deserves. 
Dr. Foster was a model ex-pastor. Never by word or deed 
did he throw a hindrance in the way of his successor's efforts ; 
never even in his family did he criticise his successor's work 
or methods. On the contrary, he always spoke of him most 
lovingly and appreciatively, and was constantly seeking to 
strengthen his hands among his people. He was absolutely 
free from jealousy of Mr. Seabury's successes; on the other 
hand, he was made happy by them. This was partly due to 
the fact that he had not an atom of self-seeking in his nature ; 
partly to his intense dislike of that petty spirit of criticism 
and gossip which loves to pick flaws in others ; partly to his 
devotion to John-street Church, which led him to rejoice in 
anything that advanced its interests ; partly and most emphat- 
ically to his warm admiration and personal love for Mr. Sea- 
bury, as a man, a Christian, and a minister. More than once 
did Dr. Foster in his family express his affection for Mr. Sea- 
bury, as his son in the faith, and say that there were three 
young ministers in whom he felt a special interest, and for 
whom he desired to do anything in his power for their good, — 
his own son, Rev. C. D. Barrows, then pastor of the Kirk-street 
Church, Lowell, and Mr. Seabury. 

The following kind and appreciative words from Mr. Sea- 
bury, written in review of this period of Dr. Foster's life, cor- 
roborate the statements made above. 

" It is a delightful retrospect, my associate pastorate with 
that broad-souled man. I wish I could trace with a diamond 
point my sense of gratitude for his cordial, fraternal, cheering, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 223 



stimulating welcome when I began my labors. He feared that 
by some possibility he might }3lace in my way an obstacle ever 
so small. He objected to consider the new relation as anything 
but an associate pastorate. In his mind the term colleague 
was not adequate to express the equality of our intimate rela- 
tionship. His bearing towards his co-laborer was the same 
from first to last, — kind, considerate, helpful. I seldom re- 
ceived from him a criticism of any measure I joresented to him. 
On many an occasion when I had finished preaching and turned 
around with a sinking heart, he was there to greet me with a 
moistened cheek, an eager grasp of the hand, a kind word of 
cheer. Touching the order and methods of church-work, he 
uniformly endorsed every suggestion I had to make. He gave 
me ' a large liberty,' indeed. Even in those matters involving 
a departure from the established order of things, he felt that 
the new was the better way. This was oftentimes disappoint- 
ing to me, but I saw in it the great soul that prompted his 
liberal treatment, and suggested to his mind that affecting but 
unsuitable and trying quotation, 'You must increase, but I 
must decrease.' When, as he was wont to do, he called me 
' Timothy,' I found a reciprocal title in that which may be ap- 
propriately given him because of the intensity and warmth of 
his nature — 'Paul.' His charity and sympathy were essen- 
tially Pauline. Such phrases as ' thinketh no evil,' 'envieth 
not,' 'rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth,' are 
applicable to this expounder of that thrilling chapter, as it w T as 
to the writer of it. Although these were qualities peculiar to 
his w T hole life, they were especially characteristic of him during 
his later and riper years. He covered the frailties of others 
with the mantle of his charity. But he preached as a dying 
man to dying men. When he placed himself side by side with 
his fellow-sinners, it was in the spirit of the words, ' Of w T hom 
I am chief.' The last sermon he ever preached was from the 
burning words of Ezekiel, ' Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil 
ways, for why will ye die?' In such a theme his heart found 
scope for its unquenchable desire. It was a sermon of much 
weeping. There were tears in his voice as truly as in his eyes. 
Dr. Foster was one whose fountain of tears lay near the sur- 
face. His emotions came from his yearning heart. At the 
close of that last sermon he fell back into his chair, almost 
prostrate from his excessive nervous effort. But during the 
delivery of the discourse he was as full of his wonted earnest- 
ness of manner as ever. When he came down from the plat- 
form, it was not with the tottering step of age or feebleness, 
but the trembling reaction of overwork and exhaustion. Then 



224 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



followed spasmodic tortures of the brain, and sleepless nights. 
Even after the physical apparatus began to grow weak, and 
protracted mental labor unendurable, thought was as fresh and 
vigorous as ever, argument as close and conclusive, appeal as 
urgent and persuasive. It was the body, not the mind, that 
gave way. The scabbard was thin and fragile ; the keen edge 
of the sword was penetrating its toil-worn surface. In his work 
his physical powers became a prey to his feelings. His sym- 
pathies were of an extraordinary depth. He took upon his 
own soul every subject of sorrow and trial, and bore it as his 
own. Few knew how deeply he felt the disappointment of his 
enforced absence from church, after he had ceased to preach. 
His heart was with his people to the last. He knew them bet- 
ter than they supposed. He kept himself constantly informed 
of the changes in their households. He understood, by intui- 
tion, as it were, their religious condition. His wonderful per- 
ception of men grew more discriminating as the years passed. 
With it grew that charity which covers a multitude of sins. 
He loved to meet his people in his own home, but his absorb- 
ing labors for the pulpit, and his impaired health, to a large 
degree proscribed his pastoral labors. If he failed to see his 
people in their homes as often as they wished, he more than 
made it up in the pulpit. Then he told us more of our inner 
life than we imagined he knew. So highly was he esteemed 
by all classes, that he was often sought for in the emergency 
of approaching death by those, especially, who were unpre- 
pared to die. 

" It was affecting to see how his broad catholicity of spirit 
deepened during the latter years of his ministry. His pen was 
still active upon some subject connected with reform, or mis- 
sions, or freedom. When he ceased to preach on these themes, 
he wrote on them. A year or so before his death, he was en- 
gaged in writing a series of biographical sketches, entitled 
' The Heroes of Liberty.' He was at heart a genuine reformer 
and missionary. He loved freedom as he loved his home and 
his church. All his productions glowed with a fire and pathos 
it is hard to conceive possible during the years of his increas- 
ing decline. 

"Did any one ever labor with such unsparing self-abnegation? 
This was equally true of him during the active years of this 
associate pastorate. Whatever he put his hands to was done 
with that careful attention to thorough structure and delicate 
analysis and finish, by which the earlier years of his ministry 
were noted. Although endowed with such superior pulpit 
talent, no one could toil more zealously to make his talent 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 225 



potent and persuasive. Even after a sermon was completed, 
he would remodel, polish, even burnish, portions which to his 
discriminating eye could bear it. Then every period was well 
rounded, every sentence stood out, — a thing of force, pun- 
gency, and conviction, divested of all angles and roughnesses. 
He feathered his arrow ; it was certainly well sharpened and 
accurately aimed. He told me once that during the latter 
portion of his ministry he felt the importance of illuminating 
his discourses with more illustration. This he was easily able 
to do, drawing from that large mass of anecdote and fact, the 
accumulation of years of research. His interest in public 
events was keen and quick to the last. From the columns of 
the secular and religious papers he had gathered a rich treasury 
of current knowledge, which he well knew how to use. 

" If there is one word which expresses more clearly than any 
other the leading characteristic of Dr. Foster's life, it is unction. 
In the pulpit this quality prevailed to a wonderful degree, — 
a breathing, deep-felt intensity, founded on a solid, intellectual 
basis. His extempore addresses in the lecture-room swept us 
along in the current of his marvelously rapid and moving 
eloquence. His unction in prayer was proverbial. It grew 
deeper and more mellow as the consciousness of his nervous 
debility increased, and he knew that the end could not be afar 
off. He bore on his heart and lips the needs of all his hearers. 
He gathered into one the wants of all classes and ages ; then 
made them more real to ourselves, by giving them the outlines 
of his sensitive, analytic, and comprehensive mind, pouring 
over all the wealth of his description and the importunity of 
his soul. At funeral services his prayers were especially 
felicitous and beautiful. They brought relief and solace. 
Whether in the pulpit or out of it, in his study or at the house 
of mourning, our beloved brother rises out of the past an im- 
passioned figure, — an intense, a burning desire. He had pro- 
found emotions, balanced by the strongest intellectual forces. 
Every faculty of his mental and spiritual being was finely and 
delicately strung, — a harp of a thousand strings. All his tal- 
ents were of a high order, and he held them in full measure ; 
nothing was ordinary, either in quality or compass. It was, in 
fact, the sustained vigor of his mental forces, his capacity for 
work, which caused wonder. Every power was also highly 
cultivated. 

"Dr. Foster possessed a remarkable harmony of qualities. 
In him were realized the strength and energy of manhood's 
ripest attainments, and the gentleness of a refined nature. 
Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, once said of Sir Thomas Fair- 



226 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

fax, that which is appropriate to our honored and revered 
brother, — 

' Both sexes' virtues were in him combined ; 
He had the firmness of the manliest mind, 
And all the tenderness of womankind. 
He never knew what envy was, nor hate ; 
His soul was filled with worth and honesty, 
And with another thing, quite out of date, 
Called modesty.' 

" He always suffered from a sense of his own unworthiness. 
While he preached to others a saving gospel, he feared that he 
might come short of the glory of God. But when the hour 
of dissolution approached, he looked death in the face with a 
calm, peaceful, and expectant hope. He was ready. The hour 
he feared might be one of terrors, was one of rest. It was my 
privilege to kneel by his bedside often during those final hours. 
His faith was strong and comforting. The Saviour he had 
preached so faithfully led him by the hand through the valley 
of the shadow of death; he could fear no evil." 

In these long days of feebleness, Dr. Foster received fre- 
quent visits from two greatly loved and honored physicians, — 
Dr. Daniel Holt, a parishioner who did not long survive him, 
and Dr. F. A. Warner. Dr. Holt was a man of much original- 
ity of mind, and having a decided theological bent, delighted 

"In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate." 

In his later years he came rather as a friend than a prac- 
titioner, his age and ill health forbidding his assuming medical 
responsibility. Dr. Warner made his visits as a practising 
physician, but his hearty sympathy and religious experiences 
made him welcomed as a friend no less, and whenever his 
presence was announced Dr. Foster's eye would brighten. 
Indeed, Dr. Foster, like most ministers, was always happy in 
his relations to physicians. The medical profession treats the 
ministry with great kindness, and there are few ministers who 
do not appreciate this fact, and recognize in the physician a 
brother who imitates Christ in healing the sick, as much as the 
minister follows Christ in caring for the soul. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 227 

But the fell disease, which . it was afterwards discovered 
must for several years have been undermining his strength and 
destroying a vital organ, now made rapid progress. Dr. Fos- 
ter had long been troubled with difficulty of the liver. That 
organ had ever been inactive and a source of derangement to 
all the functions of his body. It now proved to be seriously 
diseased, and began to manifest its disorder by sharp pains, 
and by inducing great lassitude. Throughout the winter of 
1881-2, Dr. Foster felt unusually feeble, sustaining himself, 
however, in his ordinary habits with much cheerfulness. During 
the month of February his pain and weakness increased, and 
he became unable to sit up long at a time. Dreading to give 
up to his illness, he would dress in the course of the day 
and lie upon the sofa by the hour together. The last day 
that he was able to do this, he was reading Trevelyan's Life of 
Macaulay, the gift of a valued friend, and when he laid it 
down he left it open, as if expecting soon to take it up again. 
That afternoon a friend called, and he talked with her 
pleasantly of Macaulay. He affirmed a poem in the volume, 
written by Macaulay on his retirement from parliamentary 
life, to be better than any one of his famous lays. He com- 
pared Macaulay with other essayists, and expressed a deter- 
mination to read his writings more, as his own health 
improved. He also talked about Mr. Blaine's eulogy of Pres- 
ident Garfield, criticising some of Mr. Blaine's remarks regard- 
ing the late President's religious creed, and expressing with 
great emphasis his own faith in the doctrines of Christianity. 
He referred to his own habit of preserving newspaper clip- 
pings as one that had been of great value, and was of present 
comfort to him ; and spoke of the ease with which he could 
peruse them compared with the difficulty of taking up any 
heavy connected reading. He expressed great sympathy for 
friends suffering from ill health, making no reference to the 
intense pains he was then enduring himself. The day follow- 
ing, March 7, he took his bed for the last time. " I remember 
when I took my bed," he afterwards said, " for it was the 
anniversary of Webster's great Hayne debate." Little by 



228 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

little, as he lay upon his bed, he wasted away. He suffered 
constantly, and much of the time severely ; could not turn upon 
his right side at all, and was greatly dependent upon the assid- 
uous attentions of his wife and daughter. From the begin- 
ning he was most patient and uncomplaining, his pains being 
known only by the compression of his lips and an occasional 
groan, which he could only partially suppress. Throughout 
his illness his mind was perfectly clear, and he loved to con- 
verse on the topics that had interested him through life. 
He talked with his brother Davis and sister Sarah, who 
watched at his bedside, of the latest phases of politics, of the 
anti-Chinese bill, and of the Andover discussion, and desired 
to have the points made by the Faculty read to him. At his 
request, his wife gave him an account of Longfellow's funeral, 
and at another time there was read to him Bryant's Thanatop- 
sis. After listening to it, he observed that there was not a 
word in it about the future life, except the word "trust," and 
expressed regret that Bryant had not written another poem of 
equal eloquence and power on the immortality of the soul. 
"To-morrow," he added, "I wish you would read to me 
Wordsworth's Ode to Immortality and Longfellow's Voices of 
the Night." A few days subsequently, he called his daughter 
to his side and asked for a reading of the former poem. She 
began the Ode to Immortality, but presently he complained 
of weariness. " The poem requires close thinking, and I am 
not able to follow it," he said. 

But above all things else his thoughts were most interested 
in heaven and divine things. He took great joy in hearing the 
Bible read and in listening to prayer. When his beloved 
brothers in the ministry, Dr. Street and Mr. Seabury, called 
upon him and prayed with him, the influence of their visit 
seemed to abide with him and comfort him for hours after- 
wards. "The thought of Christ," said he to his physician, 
"soothes me more than anything else." 

During his sickness his people showed him the greatest kind- 
ness, which he warmly appreciated. The deacons made up a 
purse and sent it to him, and subsequently the people gener- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 229 

ally combined in presenting him a handsome sum to meet his 

needs. Other friends from near and far hastened to express 

their sympathy. For all this he was deeply grateful. The 

last words he ever committed to paper, except a letter to his 

sister, were dictated by him in acknowledgment of the gifts 

of John-street people. They were these : — 

"March 23. 

" Dear Friends, — I wish to return my sincere and heartfelt 
thanks for your most generous gift. My strength is utter 
weakness, and I cannot say all I would. My prayer is that 
God may reward you. On the border-land between earth and 
heaven, I look back with profound thanksgivings to God for 
the privileges of this pastorate. I have loved this people with 
a fervent love. I hope to meet them in heaven. With deep 
affection and esteem, e. b. f." 

Among many delicate attentions shown to him, bouquets of 
choice flowers were frequently sent in to him. In these he 
took great delight, examining them particularly, and finding 
in them, as he always had in every part of creation, fresh evi- 
dence of the love of his Heavenly Father. His life-long 
interest in nature, and his pleasure at the approach of 
spring, were further exemplified by a request he often 
made, when the music of the birds in early morning 
attracted his notice. "Please open the windows," he would 
say, " that I may hear the birds sing." His daughter had 
thoughtfully written to friends in all parts of the country, in- 
forming them that her father was probably in his last illness. 
From these friends letters came back, expressive of warmest 
interest and sympathy. These were read to him, and they 
comforted him greatly. He never failed even in his paroxysms 
of pain to be sensible of the kindness of others, and to thank 
them with that gentle politeness which had always character- 
ized him. To the friends who came in to move him upon his 
bed ; to those who had watched with him ; to those who 
brought him some pleasant remembrance ; to his brother and 
sister standing by his bedside ; to his wife and daughter, an- 
ticipating his every wish, — he would say, "I thank you," with 
such feeling that it seldom failed to bring tears to every eye. 



230 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

During his sickness his son was able to come on from Jersey 
City twice to visit him, and it was quite characteristic of his 
unselfish and thoughtful disposition, that he charged his family, 
just before his son left, "You must not urge A. to stay longer 
than he thinks best. He will stay as long as he can, but his 
cares are many, and he can give me only a day or two at 
most." At the second visit the battle was almost won. The 
voice of the sufferer was well-nigh gone, and could be heard 
but in a whisper. The eyes were deeply set and already dim. 
The labored breath slowly came and slowly went. The hand, 
pale and emaciated, lay on the sheet with scarcely strength to 
move. But as the son came in the eye lighted up, a whispered 
welcome was heard, the feeble hand gave a glad pressure. 
Once more the son kneeled by his father's side and prayed, 
closing with a thanksgiving that the gates of heaven were 
open, and that all who accepted the cleansing of Jesus' blood 
might enter in and be with Christ forever. As the prayer 
ended, the father exclaimed in a whisper, " Oh, blessed, 
blessed!" Little was said as the hours went by, except that 
now and then some one of the family would make some com- 
forting remark, or repeat some passage of Scripture. At one 
time the dying man, evidently desirous of expressing once 
more his gratitude for the kindnesses of his family during his 
sickness, and, as it seemed to them, for the services of a life- 
time, casting his eyes on each one as he said it, whispered, " I 
thank you," "I thank you," "I thank you." "Father," said 
the son, a little later, " is the Saviour precious ? " " Infinitely," 
was the reply, uttered with an emphasis not lessened by the 
effort with which the whisper was made audible. "And 
heaven near?" "Yes," was the response, uttered in such a 
way that it seemed like a voice that dropped from the skies. 
In years past Dr. Foster's hope of salvation had at times been 
strangely clouded. Under the influence of disease, sometimes 
his faith grew weak, and he was almost in despair. He loved 
his family, his books, the beauties of nature, and he shrank 
from the pains of dissolution. But during his last sickness, all 
fear of death disappeared, and he spoke of it cheerfully, even 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 231 

said if it were right, he should pray for an instant release. 
And now in his dying hour God gave him dying peace. His 
soul was unclouded. He was perfectly happy. With a 
Saviour infinitely precious and a heaven near, he was glad to 
go. And yet with these longings the fire of a deep and tender 
affection for his family, that next to his love to his Saviour 
had been his controlling passion in life, burned up warmly 
still, — for his last audible utterance, given expression with the 
greatest difficulty, was this, " Oh, how I love you all ! " 

It was at five o'clock in the afternoon of April 11, 1882, 
that his spirit passed peacefully away. And so he had his 
wish, which he had expressed in a letter, years before, — 

" If I could choose my own time to die, it should be in the 
spring of the year. The desolation of winter is banished ; the 
singing of birds is in the trees ; the bursting buds, the blos- 
soming flowers, the expanding leaves, the green grass on the 
borders of a thousand running brooks, speak only of summer 
glories and autumn harvests. All nature is eloquent of new 
life, new hope, new joy. All things point us forward to the 
resurrection and the immortal life. All influences raise up the 
heart in gratitude and trustfulness to God. Let us thank God 
for the beautiful spring, and let its blessed suggestions elevate 
and control our minds." 

So let us say. Let us thank God for this beautiful life that 
on a fair spring-day burst the bud of the earthly and blos- 
somed out into the joy and privilege of the heavenly. 



X. — Characteristics. 

It is interesting and profitable to search into the peculiar- 
ities of one whose character is in any particular worthy of 
imitation. If Dr. Foster was in many respects a model man 
and minister, as those who knew him best believe, what were 
the things distinctive about him ? They may, or they may not, 
be deserving of imitation, — at any rate, they go to make up 
the man. These characteristics are suggested by what has 



232 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

gone before, and may be discovered by a careful perusal of 
the extracts from his letters already given ; yet some points 
deserve further notice and illustration. 

Dr. Foster's literary tastes were strongly marked from the 
first. By birthright he was intensely fond of reading, and he 
read much, and with a wide range. He indulged very little in 
fiction, reading only a few of the best novels ; but he greatly 
enjoyed history, poetry, and essays. Of biography he was 
especially fond. He never wearied of political studies, and 
orations and addresses had for him a peculiar fascination. 
He was fond of frequenting the courts of law, to hear the 
great lawyers plead their cases. He always, when in health, 
was present at the lectures and political speeches given by 
prominent men. He was able to gratify his desire but par- 
tially in the purchase of books, but he always had access to 
public libraries, and thus kept a supply of new books con- 
stantly before him. His habits of reading were exceedingly 
thorough. Almost always he made analyses of what he 
had read, and among his papers are numberless notes on 
histories, biographies, and other books. He had no system 
or plan in accordance with which he went through a 
definite course of reading. He never made reading a task, 
but luxuriated in it, taking up a book or a theme only so 
long as it interested him. It was his frequent practice to 
gather a pile of books around him in nowise related to one 
another, and then to read a few pages in one and a few in 
another, opening anywhere, at random, till he became com- 
pletely absorbed in some one of them. Nor did he generally 
read with the distinctive idea of gathering material for a 
special sermon or series of sermons. While he read, indeed, 
he was always asking himself how this or that could be intro- 
duced into a sermon, and what bearing this fact or that had 
on the great doctrines ; but he seldom read as one reads an 
encyclopaedia, picking out certain articles for the sake of 
information on a certain subject. The rather, he read as a bee 
flies from flower to flower, gathering sweets w T herever they may 
be found, and going home treasure-laden to stow it away 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, 233 

wherever there may be an appropriate cell. He was fond of 
commenting on his reading. Not only his sermons, but his 
letters and his conversations all bore marks of .his interest in 
what he read. The following criticism on Choate illustrates 
his method. 

"Permit me to thank you for the 'Life of Choate.' It is 
written with admirable simplicity, yet with clear, progressive, 
accumulative power. I began more than twenty years ago to 
hoard up, with a miser's greed, every scrap from the news- 
papers which had a paragraph from Choate's tongue or Choate's 
pen. On old yellow cuttings, often read, dog-eared, much 
worn, I have most of his addresses and many of his letters. 
My heart and my eyes rejoice to find them, with large addi- 
tions, in beautiful type, on the clear white page, in a form for 
permanent use. There are no words of any author whom I 
have ever read, that stir me like those of Rufus Choate. Web- 
ster holds me from the beginning to the end of one of his 
addresses with attention perfectly concentrated, with inward 
delight deep and unalloyed, with a consciousness of instruc- 
tion and of mental elevation altogether peculiar; but Choate, 
while he produces the same impressions of mental wealth and 
grandeur, reaches more the hidden fountains of emotion. He 
sends the thrills to my fingers' ends, he draws the tears from my 
eyes, he chokes me with irrepressible sobs. He is a mystery 
to me. What is the secret of his imagination and power I 
cannot explain." 

There is value, also, in this list of books to be read, which he 
drew up for one of his children. 

" I give you, on this page, a list of books such as you have 
asked for : — 

I. — History and Travels. 



P. Smith ; Hist, of the World. 

Mommsen; Hist, of Rome. 

C. C. Felton ; Ancient and Modern 
Greece. 

Milman ; Hist, of the First Three 
Centuries. 

William Smith; Ancient Biogra- 
phy and Mythology. 

White; Eighteen Christian Cen- 
turies. 

Plutarch's Lives (Clough's Edi- 
tion). 

16 



Hallam ; Middle Ages. 

Guizot; Civilization in Europe. 

G. W. Green; Lectures on the 
Middle Ages. 

D'Aubigne; History of the Refor- 
mation. 

Ranke ; History of the Popes. 

Robertson; Charles V. 

Motley; History of the Nether- 
lands. 

Prescott ; Ferdinand and Isabella. 

Irving ; Columbus. 



234 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



Schiller ; Thirty Years' War. 
Smiles ; Huguenots. 
MissPardoe; Louis XIV. 
Carlyle ; French Revolution. 
Stevens ; Lectures on France. 
Walter Scott ; Napoleon. 
J. S. C. Abbott ; Napoleon I. 
Knight ; Popular History. 



Macaulay ; England and Essays. 

Mackintosh; History of Revolu- 
tion. 

Hallam ; Constitutional History. 

Goldwin Smith; Three English 
Statesmen. 

Vaughan ; English Revolutions. 

Creasy ; Fifteen Decisive Battles. 



II. 



Historical Novels. 



William Ware ; Zenobia, Julian. 

Walter Scott ; Ivanhoe, Fortunes 
of Nigel, Talisman. 

Bulwer-Lytton ; Rienzi, and Last 
of Barons. 

Thackeray ; Virginians, New- 
comes, and Henry Esmond. 



Mrs. Charles; Dray tons and Dave- 
nants, and Both Sides of the Sea. 
Whittier ; Life of Mary Powell. 
Bungener ; Priest and Huguenot. 
George Eliot; Romola. 
Lockhart; Valerius. 
George Croly; Salathiel. 



John Milton. 
John Knox. 
Samuel Johnson. 
Edmund Burke. 
Walter Scott. 
Thomas Arnold. 
Thomas Chalmers. 
Thomas Guthrie. 
Hannah More. 
Mary Somerville. 
Mary Leycester Hare. 
Mary L. Duncan. 
Mary Lyon. 
Charlotte Bronte. 
Mary Van Lennep. 
Fidelia Fisk. 
Isabella Graham. 
Samuel Romilly. 
Francis Horner. 
John Wilson. 
Francis Jeffrey. 
Robert Southey. 
William Wordsworth. 
William Arnot. 



III. — Biography. 

W. H. Prescott. 
Daniel Webster. 
Samuel Adams. 
Charles Sumner. 
W. H. Seward. 
Alexander Hamilton. 
John Hampden. 
John Jay. 
John Winthrop. 
T. B. Macaulay. 
James Mackintosh. 
William Wilberforce. 
Reginald Heber. 
Edward Irving. 
Washington Irving. 
William Goodell. 
E. N. Kirk. 
C. G. Finney. 
Edward Pays on. 
Archibald Alexander. 
J. Addison Alexander. 
Bradford Homer. 
John Todd. 
John Keble. 



Rufus Choate. 

DeWitt Clinton. 

Patrick Henry. 

Hugh Miller. 

Fowell Buxton. 

George Stephenson. 

Edward Forbes. 

William Wirt. 

William the Silent. 

William IV. 

Prince Albert. 

Oliver Cromwell. 

Masson's British Nov- 
elists. 

Sullivan's Public Char- 
acters. 

Harvard Memorial Bi- 
ographies. 

Lossing's Pictorial 
History. 

Goodrich's British Elo- 
quence. 

Frank Moore's Ameri- 
can Eloquence. 



IV. — Poetry. 



Cowper's Task. 
Milton's Paradise Lost. 
Thomson's Seasons. 
Wordsworth's Excursion. 
Bryant. 



Longfellow. 

Whittier. 

Lowell. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. 



He was a great student of newspapers, and by their aid 
knew as much of human nature as many a man who — as he 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 235 

did not — constantly mingles with men on the street. He 
was ever clipping choice articles out of the papers and sorting 
them under separate headings. He had great rolls of these 
clippings on a wide variety of subjects, and it was a favorite 
diversion with him to take one of these rolls and read it for 
hours together. He always had in his pockets little wads of 
these clippings, a choice poem, a biographical passage, an elo- 
quent paragraph from some political speaker, or a description 
of some new pear, — and these he was always reading at odd 
moments. These clippings were of inestimable value to him. 
They furnished him an inexhaustible store-house of fact and 
illustration, from which he enriched his sermons and addresses. 
He was always a remarkable letter-writer. He gave time 
and thought to his letters which but few are willing to give. 
Probably he did this largely because the motives to excellence 
were within him and not without, — within, in his conscien- 
tious desire to do everything in the best possible way, having 
no reference to the size or quality of the audience to be 
reached. In these days letter-writing is almost a lost art, but 
with him the art bore the touch of genius. He was accus- 
tomed to copy all important letters which he wrote, and mod- 
ify their phraseology. Even his letters to his children would 
often receive this revision. In his very last letter to his son, 
written just before he took his bed, he apologized because in 
his feebleness he was obliged to send the first draft. The fol- 
lowing excerpts show how he felt regarding letter-writing : — 

" I cannot spit letters any more than Robert Hall could ser- 
mons. They are always, in my case, the result of severe think- 
ing, almost as much as discourses for the pulpit. It is my 
infirmity and my sorrow that I cannot do anything extempo- 
raneously, with any comfort or satisfaction to myself. I ought 
to be able to write a letter, freely and easily ; to talk with my 
parishioners without constraint or galling fetters clanking on 
the mind ; to expound and exhort in a prayer-meeting without 
labored philosophical investigation. But, alas ! I can do noth- 
ing easily. If I study, it must be by sessions of more than a 
dozen hours a day ; if I dig, it must be with a giant's force ; 
if I write letters, or conduct funerals, or attend prayer-meet- 
ings, it must be by the sweat of the brow." 



236 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

" My Dear N , — There are three or four questions 

which you have asked, which I ought to answer, as I hold it 
to be obligatory on a good correspondent to answer questions 
which an anxious friend proposes, as much as to make reply to a 
query suggested in conversation. Indeed, in writing to friends 
I usually have kept a memorandum book, in which I put down 
in briefest words, each question as it occurs ; thus preventing 
my forgetfulness, and thus furnishing a list of topics, which 
aids me very much in sustaining a free and full correspond- 
ence." 

In preparing these letters he generally made a brief, before- 
hand, and then expanded it. A single outline is here given, 
drawn up by him for a letter to be written to a beloved 
nephew, then a young collegian. It is a fair sample of his 
method of studying before writing any letter which he deemed 
important. 

"Letter to H. : 1, Prominence of, Vermont; 2, Sad lessons 
from M. ; 3, Moody's study of the Bible; 4, Todd's estimate 
of Henry; 5, Prayer for colleges; Dea. R.'s Sabbath-school 
class, family, and pastor; revival at Princeton in 1856; 6, Ex- 
eter, under Buckminster ; 7, Sermons, essays, and poetry I 
used to read : Flavel, Baxter, Doddridge, Scott, Newton, 
Cecil, Jeremy Taylor; Isaac Taylor, Choate, Kimball, Bayne, 
Hugh Miller, Taylor Lewis ; Young, Cowper, Montgomery, 
Watts, and Milton." 

His habit of sermonizing was peculiar, and not altogether 
safe to follow, yet undoubtedly the secret of some of his most 
remarkable productions. He seldom wrote except when in the 
mood. It was the habit of one minister to take a certain 
number of sheets of paper, stitch them together, and then 
write so many hours each day till just those sheets were filled. 
It is the habit of another to begin two sermons the first of the 
week, and then to alternate steadily between them, so many 
hours on one, and then so many hours on the other, till, at the 
end of the week, both are finished together, like two hot loaves 
out of the same oven. Dr. Foster was utterly incapable of 
any method like this. He could not write to order. He must 
first build up the fires by a course of reading and study. He 
must wait till the mood was on him. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 237 

Sometimes one week, or a second, or even a third, would 
pass without his writing a word. During this time he would 
be in much distress of mind, and faithfully endeavor more 
than once to put thought to paper. But his temperament 
was such, and his exhausted condition after his intense efforts 
so great, that he could hardly do otherwise. In consequence 
he at last accepted the fact, and* accommodated his methods 
of study to his peculiarity. When he found himself unable to 
write, he would shut himself up in his study with piles of 
newspaper scraps around him, and a dozen or more books on 
all sorts of subjects open on the desk before him, while analy- 
ses of reading on half-sheets of paper accumulated as the 
days went by. Thus he rested his weary brain, filled it with 
a rich variety of facts for argument and illustration, and stim- 
ulated it to the liveliest activity in independent thought. 
Then, when the fit was on him, he was as one inspired, — he 
would throw aside his books, sit up at his desk, and drive his 
pen in fury, sometimes sixteen solid hours in a single day ; 
never asking himself whether he had enough or too much for 
a sermon, or whether he was writing just that and only that 
which he would use in the pulpit, but simply pouring forth, 
currente calamo, out of a full mind and burdened heart, the 
great thoughts that struggled in his brain for expression, 
writing often while he absently spoke aloud, as if his audience 
were before him, and while his eyes were wet with tears. At 
such times the amount he could accomplish in a single day, 
was simply marvelous. Thus in a week, if the fire lasted so 
long, — and it often lasted for weeks together,, or even months, 
— he could throw off sermon after sermon with the greatest 
ease. This excess of effort, however, and this drain upon his 
emotions, necessarily exhausted his strength. The mood 
burned out by its own vehemence. He thus found himself 
unable at last to do anything, till little by little his physical 
system revived, and his mind by rest and a fresh course of 
reading, regained its tone. 

His mind worked as nature works in gathering the moisture 
from sea and lake and stream. Little by little, through long 
and oppressive days of heat, the clouds are gathering, till at 



238 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

last, in their repletion, they pour themselves out refreshingly 
upon the thirsty earth. It was thus that Dr. Foster, with toil 
and heat, by independent processes of mind, distilled the 
knowledge gained by wide courses of reading and painful 
trains of reasoning, till in his mental fulness, to express his 
thought was a necessity and a relief. A method like this, 
while producing great results, necessarily drained his vitality, 
and brought on disease and death before their time. 

His high ideal of sermonizing led him to have a great dislike 
for preaching old sermons. He did so preach, more or less, as 
all ministers must and ought. And yet seldom did he repeat 
a sermon as it was originally written. He had a great habit 
— if he thought of repeating a sermon — of tearing his old 
sermons up into their separate heads, and changing the heads 
about, introducing new divisions here and there. He could 
do this the more easily from the fact that each sermon of his 
was rather like a string of pearls than a vase. If the string 
be broken, the separate pearls are just as valuable and can be 
re-strung. If the vase is broken it is worthless. The separate 
heads of a sermon were with him commonly units in them- 
selves, and the unity of the whole discourse was not so strongly 
marked that a single head could not be omitted or inserted 
without impairing the force of the whole. In some respects 
this was a fault, in others an advantage. It certainly is a 
mighty power when a sermon advances, step by step, like the 
campaign of a great general, throwing up breastworks on every 
side of the enemy till he is hemmed in beyond escape, and in 
the conclusion opening up with a battery of argument that is 
absolutely convincing. This, however, was not usually Dr. 
Foster's method. It was not the one best adapted to his type 
of mind. He naturally leaped at once into the middle of the 
fray. He could not brook the delay of slow approaches. His 
methods were not by sapping and mining, nor by the cautious 
processes of entrenchment. With his first sentences he must 
open fire upon the enemy, and from first to last his sermons 
were a continuous cannonade. His temperament led him to 
strike a succession of ponderous blows, any one of which might 
be very possibly omitted without weakening the rest, but each 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 239 

one of which was as nearly irresistible as he could make it. 
Every man must be himself, and it is no reflection on the value 
of his sermons to say that Dr. Foster worked by the latter 
method. Some of the peculiarities of his processes in sermon- 
izing are brought out in the following extracts : — 

"My brain works only by concentration and by accumula- 
tion. I begin a sermon with forebodings and anxiety. I put 
down outlines of thought, facts, proofs, illustrations, heads of 
argument, without knowing at first the method of my dis- 
course, or the binding chain of my ideas. The wheels gather 
heat and swiftness by the running of the machine. At mid- 
night, after a sitting of sixteen hours, my mind is more effi- 
cient than in the morning. I become absorbed in the subject. 
I cannot leave it without tearing myself away from a delight- 
ful employment. New thoughts spring up; new analogies 
are suggested. Ideas take their relative position. New log- 
ical chains are woven. If I am turned away to other employ- 
ments for two or three hours, the consecutive thoughts are 
broken apart, the enthusiasm and the passion of thought are 
suspended, and I cannot on that day resume the efficient action 
of my mind. It may be a habit which I have formed in- 
advertently and unwisely. It may be a constitutional infir- 
mity and misfortune. But sure I am it is a fact, and I cannot 
make it otherwise. Most of my sermons in Lowell have been 
wholly new. All the rest have been laboriously rewritten. 
When I went from Henniker to Pelham, I destroyed all my 
old sermons. When I went from Pelham to Lowell, I re- 
solved to preach no old sermons. I have not preached ten 
of them, without tearing down the old house and rebuilding 
completely the edifice, using only such of the former timbers 
as seemed to me appropriate for a better architecture. I have 
now five hundred sermons which are nearly as perfect as, with 
my feeble ability, I can make them." 

"November 17, 1880. 

"I have been writing out a list of the sermons and addresses 
which I have prepared and delivered since I have been in the 
ministry. Would you like to see it? I estimate my work 
as follows: 1,500 sermons, 1,000 Sunday-evening addresses, 
500 Friday-evening addresses, 132 addresses at communion 
seasons, 100 Sabbath-school concert addresses, 100 addresses 
before councils, 50 ordination sermons, 520 funeral addresses, 
50 educational lectures, 50 platform speeches. Making the 
addresses average thirty minutes each in length, I have de- 
livered at least four thousand five hundred of such. Every- 



240 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

thing has been done by great effort, — nothing extemporane- 
ously. My fear of man, and my embarrassment unless I was 
certain of my line of thought, have been such that I could 
not speak impromptu. Often the address has been repeated 
in soliloquy, in my study, four, five, or six times over. All 
these services, written or unwritten, have been prepared with 
great persistency of labor, with intensity of thought, with 
deep emotion. I have hardly ever written a sermon which 
has not cost me tears, often copious, gushing tears, I have 
given all I possessed, of time, talent, sympathy, strength, to 
my people, with an entire devotion, and with an eye single (if 
I know my own heart) to the salvation of souls. My success 
has not been correspondent to my ardent hopes." * 

" I preached yesterday, half the day only. My monthly 
sermon was on 'Prayer in the Family,' unwritten, an hour 
long; preached at the outset with embarrassment, but with 
enlargement of freedom as I proceeded, and with something 
of that more direct appeal and more deliberate fervor which 
characterize my unwritten efforts. I know not which my 
congregation like better. My style is less elaborate, perhaps 
my thoughts more emphatic in their conveyance, in the latter 
method." 

Dr. Foster's style of preaching naturally corresponded with 
his methods of study. His sermons were crowded with illus- 
trations, drawn very largely from his wide reading in biogra- 
phy. He was told more than once that his sermons were all 
windows; but if this were a fault, it was a fault that held the 
thought of his audiences to the truth he presented. His ser- 
mons were strongly marked by emotion. He had that inde- 
finable grace in the ministry called "unction." He spoke 
with great swiftness of delivery and often at great length. 
In this way, while he worked beyond his strength and greatly 
taxed the attention and retentive powers of his auditors, he 
yet gained a momentum and power of impression impossible 
otherwise. 

His prayers never failed to move his congregations 
profoundly. A letter from his father in his early minis- 
try speaks of a prayer which he had offered on some public 
occasion as attracting great attention, and requests him, if he 
can recall it, to write it out for his father's pleasure. This 
same power in prayer continued with him through life. And 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 241 

yet these prayers, while wonderful in their sweep of thought 
and beauty of expression were not orations. They were not 
like that famous prayer of Mr. Everett's, which a godless re- 
porter characterized as " the most eloquent ever delivered to a 
Boston audience." They were so humble, so naming with 
emotion, so manifestly spoken in the ear of God without 
thought of man, that all who heard them were caught up by 
them and borne by the sheer force of their sincerity and fervor 
to the very gates of heaven. These prayers were invariably 
carefully prepared with the book of Psalms before him and 
with various books of devotion in his hand. Dr. Foster also 
was always accustomed before he went to the house of God, to 
pace his room and throw his thoughts into suitable shape for 
public utterance. 

Dr. Foster had a high ideal of the ministry, which did not 
permit him for a moment to live for self, or even to act on 
any of those principles which with some seem only dictates of 
ordinary prudence. He never left a parish for the sake of a 
larger salary, but from a sense of duty refused many tempting 
invitations where his remuneration would have been doubled. 
He never held a call in abeyance, to see if he could not do 
better in a worldly point of view, whether in respect to salary, 
or comfort, or position. He never did a thing to push himself, 
or to secure for himself prominence or reputation. His one 
aim was simply to do his duty as it came to him, and to leave 
all the rest with God. Some of his views on these matters are 
given in the following extracts. 

"Men of the world, in secular enterprises, may plan for lar- 
ger business and larger remuneration, for business activity and 
business success are the leading objects of desire with them ; 
but I do not understand that the minister is at liberty thus to 
plan for secularities. He is not his own. He belongs to Christ 
and the Church. He must labor for souls. He is not per- 
mitted, by the rule of the Gospel, to reject one field after 
another, simply or mainly from considerations of salary. 

"I have not lived for self-aggrandisement, or money, or ease, 
or fame. These thoughts have been far from me. I have 
cherished an absorbing, profound, incessant longing for the 



242 MEMORIAL OF EEV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

spiritual welfare of this people and of this city. I mourn for 
my deficiencies in the ministry. With deep humiliation of 
soul, with tears of a broken heart, and tremblings of a broken 
frame, I throw myself prostrate before the Cross of Christ 
and implore pardon for my sins. The mercy, the infinite 
mercy of Jesus is all my hope. My toils and my accomplish- 
ment, my anxiously considered plans, my earnestly pursued 
purposes, my virtues, and my works seem to me like the vanish- 
ing mist before the fires of the last Great Day. But when I 
stand before the Judgment and my people stand at my side, 
they will see that love to them has been the mighty tide, 
like the rush of the Gulf Stream, carrying forward, drawing 
in, engrossing, controlling my thoughts and my hopes, my 
pleasures and my occupations. 

" I have never been settled over any church which I did not 
love with a profound esteem, and for which I did not pray 
with daily and wrestling supplication. What am I and what 
is my Father's house, that I should be called to minister to the 
elect of God, to comfort and guide and cheer the beloved of 
Christ, to stand in a relation so intimate to holy and illus- 
trious teachers of theology? It has always filled me with 
wonder and humility and thanksgiving and fear." 

Dr. Foster was a man of strongly marked feelings. When- 
ever he was interested in a thing his interest became a passion. 

The great principles involved in politics were among the 
subjects which absorbed his thought. He was by nature a 
statesman. He knew every movement in Congress and in the 
politics of the more important States. He knew all the great 
men of the nation by reputation, and could give on the instant 
almost any information desired regarding their history and 
achievements. During his pastorate in Pelham he ran as 
Whig candidate for representative to the State Legislature, 
but was fortunately defeated by the other party.- We say 
fortunately ; for had he .been turned aside in his early min- 
istry into political paths, he might easily, with his passion and 
his ability in that direction, have been persuaded to give his 
days to such a life. It would have been no ignoble or useless 
life, for he was incapable of inactivity or self-aggrandisement, 
and to him the life of a statesman would have been a high and 
holy calling; but God had something better in store for him 3 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 243 

and made him quite as useful to his country as he could have 
been in legislative halls. The pulpit became his place of 
political influence, and there he ennobled the great principles 
of a free government by founding them on the teachings of 
the Bible. He regarded the ministry as under solemn obliga- 
tion to defend the great basal laws of social order, and in 
every serious emergency he spoke fearlessly on the duties of 
the hour. His sermons on Webster, the Nebraska Bill, the 
Kansas Outrages, the Attack on Sumner, the Fugitive Slave 
Law, the Civil War, the Duty of Soldiers, on Lincoln, Chase, 
and on Sumner, were utterances that made a deej) impression 
at the time of their delivery, and had a wide influence. 

Dr. Foster was equally interested in moral reforms. Re- 
peatedly have his addresses on temperance been delivered by 
invitation, to other audiences than those in his own church, 
and several of these addresses were printed. Of his interest 
in temperance he says himself : — 

" Before I graduated from college I discoursed to a crowded 
audience of my native town on the virtues and blessedness of 
total abstinence. I went out from Andover Seminary thirty 
miles, to Derry, N. H., to deliver an elaborate address on tem- 
perance. I mention these two addresses only to show that 
my zeal was early and was never intermittent. I have 
preached on temperance more than forty times since I came to 
Lowell, twice or more every year, sermons elaborated with 
severe investigation and prayer and anxiety, advocating in 
every instance teetotalism on the part of every individual; 
the banishment of all intoxicating drinks from festive occa- 
sions ; the toning up of public sentiment by constant argu- 
ment and pure example ; and last, not least, a prohibitory law, 
firm, uncompromising, if possible to be attained in every 
State. Three of these discourses have been published." 

From the first he was an ardent antislavery man, and most 
of his political utterances had a bearing on this theme. He 
had no sympathy with the Garrisonian wing of the antislavery 
party; he was no extremist; yet was he intensely in earnest, 
and did his utmost by voice and by pen to bring about the 
freedom of the slave. 



244 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

No one ever loved young men more than he. He took the 
warmest interest in their welfare, sympathized with them in 
their plans and hopes, and when they sought him for advice, 
as they often did, counseled them with such loving and un- 
assuming wisdom that they never forgot his kindness. There 
was a large circle of young men, some in the ministry, some 
in college, some in his parish, who loved him like a father. 
Three letters given below illustrate his interest in young men. 
The first is regarding one of brilliant mind, whose views in re- 
ligion were unsettled ; the second is addressed to a youthful 
minister; the third is to one of his own flock who had gone 
out from his parish to enter the ministry. 

" I could not agree with his religious opinions, and I avoided 
disputations with him, but I carefully marked his acuteness of 
mind, the breadth of his information, the strength of his argu- 
ment, and I regarded these traits with great admiration. I 
believed also that what I regarded as his errors would, through 
God's grace, be forsaken. The young mind, independent, in- 
quisitive, bold, energetic, determined to search into mysteries, 
holding itself competent to fathom all sciences, exploring with 
an eagle's eye on every side, stimulated by the progressive 
spirit of the age, often passes through this very limbo and 
cloud-land of doubt and denial, before emerging into the bright 
sunshine of faith. It was so with John P. Durbin, of the 
Methodist Church ; it was so with Albert Barnes, of the Pres- 
byterian Church ; it has been so with scores and hundreds of 
holy and most useful men." 

"My Dear Brother, — I am about used up to-day, but 
I must rally strength to express to you my profound sense 
of obligation for your letter of Sept. 17. Hardly any words 
ever spoken in my ear, hardly any testimony ever given, as to 
the results of my labors, have so cheered and quickened me as 
your kind words. I have mourned, with sincere sorrow, over 
the inadequacy of my preaching and the deficiency of my 
labors. If I have had any favorable influence upon the mind 
of such a ministerial brother as yourself, either directly or in- 
directly, to prompt, suggest, encourage, or inspire, it is a 
result much beyond my anticipation ; it is a reward of un- 
speakable value. With deep humility, and with gratitude to 
God and to you, I accept your testimony. I trust I shall be 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 245 



able to labor in the future with an increase of courage and 
hope. I watch your growing power, a power very unusual for 
any minister to attain ; I notice the evidence, ever accumulat- 
ing, of your high qualifications for the service of the Master ; 
I rejoice in the auspicious omens ever multiplying, which point 
to you as a leader in the Sacramental Host." 

"August 6, 1874. 
" Dear Brother, — Your letter of July 17 was read with 
deep interest and with gratitude for your kindness. For your 
persistent and determined friendship and devotion, I thank 
you. When I am lost in the wildernesses of Maine, or Ver- 
mont, or Missouri; or in the depths of despondency, weighed 
down by failures and shortcomings ; or in the darkness of per- 
plexity, not knowing where duty leads me ; or in sickness, 
debility, and pain, feeling that death knocks at the door, and 
that my labors are ended, — then I will trust to your love to 
lead me out of the dimness of the gloom. It is no flattery 
for me to say that I have found very few men in my life, 
young or old, whom my heart and my judgment prompted me 
to trust more entirely than yourself. I remember the earnest 
decision with which you rose from your knees, after prayer in 
my study, saying, ' I will be a Christian.' I remember your 
beautiful remarks in our prayer-meetings. I remember your 
manly and instructive sermons in my pulpit, when I was par- 
tially disabled, and the kindness which prompted you to help 
me in time of need. I remember the many interesting and 
grateful conversations I have had with you. You speak in 
your letter of ' dips ' and of ' chandeliers.' Now, I must be 
permitted earnestly to say that you do me too much honor and 
yourself too much discredit by such a comparison. I feel that 
your light shines very brightly in your beautiful morning, and 
that mine has been shadowed and imperfect all my life, and 
is growing more and more dim in the evening twilight. In 
the matter of intellectual gifts and of schorlarly attainments, 
you need not fear a comparison with any. But, after all, my 
beloved brother, if we shine in the pulpit and in the ministry, 
we shine by a reflected light. There is One, our almighty 
Redeemer, loving and adorable, who holds in His hands the 
seven stars, and our brightness is the rendering back of His 
truth and grace. It is the splendor of scriptural doctrine, it 
is the purity of a regenerate life, it is the glory of a spiritual 
mind, it is the light of faith and love and prayer, that give to 
the true minister his power. All sciences and ingenuities 
merely human are indeed a candle-dip; all true renderings of 



246 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. • 

a biblical theology and of a sanctified character are not simply 
a chandelier, but the effulgence of the risen sun. Believing, 
as I do, that you stand in near and dear communion with 
Christ, the Centre and Source of all genuine intellectual or 
religious illumination, I have had no doubt that your light 
would burn on more and more brightly, and shine on more 
and more widely, and shine forever. Usefulness is not 
bounded by lines of latitude and longitude, but by the limits 
of influence and by the diffusiveness of truth; and these limits 
are wide as the world and long as eternity." 

Dr. Foster's peculiarities of character were patent to all. 
He was a man of deep feeling, sensitive as an aspen-leaf to 
every breath of unkindness or of praise. He was easily stirred 
to tears. Many a time while reading to his family some bit of 
poetry, or some pathetic incident in the newspapers, or some 
passage in his sermons, have his feelings overcome him, so that 
for the moment he was unable to proceed. He was a man of 
intense energy of action. Whatever he did, he did as if life 
depended on doing it at once. If he worked in his garden, he 
kept at it till his clothing was drenched with perspiration. If 
he was in his study, he drove his pen till his exhausted brain 
could do no more. If he was preaching, it was with such fire 
that when the task was over, there was no strength in him. If 
he conversed on great themes, it was with such earnestness and 
anxiety, that when the interview was ended, he was as ex- 
hausted as if he had been preaching. He did not know how to 
take things easily, and this energy within was a terrific force, 
that racked his enfeebled body till it could endure the strain 
no longer and gave up its life. 

He was not only a man of profound humility, but he had a 
morbid self-distrust. He had no adequate sense of his own 
power. He had not sufficient self-confidence to do his work 
without anxiety. His early training had not been favorable 
for developing those qualities which put a man at ease in posi- 
tions of responsibility. There was something very charming 
in this unusual combination of humility and ability, but the 
humility was extreme, and bred in him a depression of spirits 
which impaired his usefulness and helped \o shorten his life. 






BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 247 

Most of the time through life he fought with disease, and un- 
doubtedly disease was largely responsible for the clouds which 
were always hovering over him. Yet these three allied influ- 
ences, morbid self-depreciation, disease, and despondency, do 
but enhance the merit of his work, for it is truly wonderful 
that in the face of these combined hindrances, he should have 
done so much and done it so well. 

He was a man of intense affections. Never had man a 
warmer heart than he. He loved his family and his friends 
with a strength that hesitated at no self-denial for their sake. 
He was a devoted husband and father. He ruled in his house by 
love. His children almost worshipped him. Unlike so many 
public men, he did not neglect them while giving his strength 
to outside duties. He made them feel his love, and taught 
them to confide in him without the least restraint. As they 
grew to years of thoughtfulness, he welcomed them to a more 
intimate relationship. He took them into his counsels ; he 
treated them as equals ; he threw them upon their honor. 
Thus it came to pass that no action and scarcely a thought of 
theirs did not receive his supervision and direction, while it 
was all done so gently, and courteously, and kindly, that the 
children had no sense of being governed, only of being loved. 

He was of a most charitable disposition. He never judged 
men harshly, but both by nature and from principle, sought to 
find the most honorable motives back of other men's actions. 
He never allowed himself to speak unkindly of others, and 
checked at once, kindly but firmly, any disposition towards 
fault-finding or harsh judgments which he discovered in his 
children. He had no patience with gossip or slander, and 
never, even in the privacy of his home-life, did he allow him- 
self in criticisms on the conduct of others. The universal rule 
of his life was expressed in these words, which he once wrote 
to one of his children : — 

"It is a rule which you ought to adopt in any family, and in 
every family, to say nothing of the absent, if you cannot speak 
in their praise. Avoid, in your conversation, censure and crit- 
icism, and the mention of people's faults." 



248 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



His piety was sincere and earnest, — not a profession, but a 
daily practice. He was often in prayer, and by his words and 
life, showed his faith in God, and his desire to do right. He 
loved devotional reading, and he loved his Bible. 

Some idea of the nature of his labors may be gained from 
the following list, which was found among his papers after his 
death. It is undoubtedly imperfect. 

Occasions in Lowell of Special Effort and Anxiety. 



Huntington Hall, 
Huntington Hall, 
Huntington Hall, 
Huntington Hall, 
Huntington Hall, 
Huntington Hall, 
Y. M. C. A. Rooms, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
John-street Church, 
Eliot Church, 
Eliot Church, 
Eliot Church, 
First Church, 
First Church, 
First Church, 
High-street Church, 
High-street Church, 



Concord, N. H., 
Concord, N. H., 
Concord, N. H., 
Concord, N. H., 
Derry, N. H., 
Deny, N. H., 
Hanover, N. H., 
Hanover, N. H., 
Seabrook, N. H., 
Manchester, N. H., 
Nashua, N. H., 
Walpole, N. H., 
Milford, N. H., 
Amherst, N. H., 



Published. 
Published. 



Published. 
Published. 
Published. 
Published. 

Published. 
Published. 
Published. 
Published. 

Published. 



Lecture on John Milton; before the Mechanics' Association 

Lecture on Prohibition. 

Lecture on Temperance. 

Lecture on Temperance. 

Address, Sabbath-school Anniversary, 1854, 

Address, Sabbath-school Anniversary, 1866 

Dedication Address. 

Address, Sabbath-school Convention. 

On the Family ; before the Reform Society. 

Funeral of Deacon Bancroft. 

Ordination of Mr. Seabury ; Prayer. 

Foreign Missions. 

Six Sermons on the War. 

Sermon on Commerce. 

Sermon on Temperance. 

Charles Sumner. 

Sermon on Seaman's Cause. 

Installation of Dr. Cleaveland ; Charge to the People. 

Ordination of Mr. A. P. Foster ; Right Hand of Fellowship. 

Installation of Mr. Greene ; Sermon. 

Ordination of Mr. Jenkins; Prayer. 

Installation of Mr. James; Charge to the Pastor. 

Installation of Mr. Baker ; Charge to the Pastor. 

Installation of Mr. Lanphear; Charge to the People. 

Installation of Mr. Street ; Charge to the People. 

Similar Occasions Elsewhere. 

Address before the American Ins. Asked for Publication. 

Installation of Mr. Ayer ; Sermon. 

Address ; Ladies' Benevolent Society Anniversary. 

N. H. General Association, Home Missions. Published. 

Temperance Discourse, July 4. 

Installation of Mr. Parsons ; Charge to the People. 

Installation of Mr. Cutter ; Sermon. 

Funeral of Rev. R. N. Wright ; Sermon. Published. 

Installation of Mr. Steele ; Sermon. 

Installation of Dr. Bartlett ; Right Hand. 

Installation of Dr. Adams ; Prayer. 

Installation of Mr. Stowe ; Sermon. 

Installation ; Charge to the Pastor. 

Address on Agriculture. Published. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



249 



Windham, N. H., 
Atkinson, N. H., 
Pembroke, N. H., 
Dover, N. H., 

Westfield, Mass., 
Westfield, Mass., 
Methuen, Mass., 
Clinton, Mass., 
Lancaster, Mass., 
Westminster, Mass., 
Dunstable, Mass., 
Tewksbury, Mass., 
Groveland, Mass., 
W. Newbury, Mass., 
Southbridge, Mass., 
Westhampton, Mass. 
Boston, Mass., 
Pittsfield, Mass., 
Putney, Vt., 
Henniker, N. H., 
Henniker, N. H., 
Salem, Mass., 
Dummerston, Vt., 
Bradford, Mass., 
Bradford, Mass., 
Monson, Mass., 
Newburyport, Mass., 
Westforcl, Mass., 
Holyoke, Mass., 
Wincliendon, Mass., 
Maiden, Mass., 
Chelsea, Mass., 
Georgetown, Mass., 
Pelham, N. H., 
Gardner, Mass., 
Dracut, Mass., 
Billerica, Mass., 
Chelmsford, Mass., 
Lawrence, Mass., 
Haverhill, Mass., 
Chelmsford, Mass., 
Hanover, N. H., 
Amherst, Mass., 
Williamstown, Mass, 
Middlebury, Vt., 
Easthampton, Mass.. 
Boston, Mass., 
Lyme, N. H., 
Hanover, N. H., 
Springfield, Mass., 
Pelham, N. H., 
Lowell, Mass., 
Newton, Mass., 



Funeral of Mrs. Thayer. Published. 

On Education ; Academy Anniversary. 
On Education ; Academy Anniversary. 
General Association, Home Missions. 
Gen'l Association ; Sermon on Home Missions. Published. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Bowker ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Grassie ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. DeWitt S. Clark ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Doe ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Emerson ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Kingsbury ; Sermon. 
Installation ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Paine ; Sermon. 
Ordination and Installation of Rev. Davis Foster ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Dodge ; Sermon. 
, Installation of Rev. Roswell Foster : Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. W. C. Foster ; Sermon. Published. 
Installation of Rev. Roswell Foster ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Amos Foster ; Sermon. 
On Baptism ; Four Sermons. Published. 

Assault on Sumner. Published. 

Address on Presbyterian Correspondence. Published. 

On Education ; Academy Anniversary. 
On Education ; Ladies' Seminary Anniversary. 
On Reading ; Ladies' Seminary Anniversary. 
On Education ; Academy Anniversary. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Hooker ; Charge to the People. 
Installation ; Charge to the Pastor. 
Ordination of Rev. Mr. Eastman ; Charge to the Pastor. 
Installation of Rev. Davis Foster ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. A. P. Foster ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. A. P. Foster ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Chas. Beecher ; Charge to the Pastor. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Farwell ; Charge to the People. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Stanton ; Charge to the Pastor. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Boardman ; Prayer. 
On Temperance. 
On Temperance. 

Installation of Rev. C. E. Fisher ; Sermon. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Allen ; Charge to the People. 
Installation of Rev. Mr. Phillips ; Sermon. 
Dartmouth College ; Address at Commencement. 
Amherst College ; Address at Commencement. 
, Williams College ; Address at Commencement. 
Middlebury College ; Address at Commencement. 
Character of Forefathers. Asked for Publication. 

On Education ; Anniversary of Miss Gilman's School. 
On Music ; Anniversary of Music School. 
On Temperance, July 4. 
On Gambling ; Dr. Buckingham's Church. 
Responsibilities of Youth ; Lyceum Address. Published. 
On Agriculture ; before Mid'x Agric'l Society. Published. 
On Church Activities ; General Association. 



17 



250 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

The following is a list of his published sermons and ad- 
dresses : — 

1843 — Four Sermons on Baptism. Preached at Henniker, N. H. 
1849— " Defence of the Gospel Necessary." Preached at the Installation of Rev. 
W. C. Foster, over the Shawmut Church, Boston. 

1849 — " Ministerial Fidelity and its Reward." In memory of Rev. R. N. Wright. 

Preached at Hanover, N. H. 

1850 — " Duty of Young Men." An Address before the Lyceum, at Pelham, N. H. 

1851 — An Address on Agriculture, delivered before the Hillsboro' Agricultural 

and Mechanical Society, at Amherst, N. H. 

1854 — "The Rights of the Pulpit," and "Perils of Freedom." Two Sermons 

preached at the John-street Church, Lowell. 

1855 — "The Family Relation." An Address before the Female Moral Reform 

Society of Lowell. Printed in The Friend of Virtue, Aug. 15, 1855. 
1856— " A North-side View of Slavery." Preached at Henniker, N. H. 

1856 — An Address on Agriculture. Delivered before the Middlesex North Agri- 

cultural Society, at Lowell. 

1857 — "The Relations of the Sabbath-school to the Work of the Ministry." 

An Address before the Third State Convention of Massachusetts Sab- 
bath-school Teachers, in Lowell. 

1858 — An Address at the Funeral of Joseph Hale Stickney. 

1859 _" Remove the Stumbling Blocks." A Sermon on Temperance, preached in 

Huntington Hall, Lowell. 
1861 — " The Moral Power of Commerce." Preached in Lowell. 
1861 — A Sermon before the Butler Rifles. Preached in Lowell. Printed in the 

Lowell Sentinel, May 25, 1861. 

1861 — A Sermon on the War. Preached in Lowell. Printed in the Lowell Senti- 

nel, April 27, 1861. 

1862 — " The Constitution our Ark in the Storm." Preached in West Springfield. 

1865 — Home Missionary Sermon. Preached before the General Association of 

Massachusetts, at Westfield, Mass. 

1866 — Address on Temperance. Delivered at Dracut, Mass., before the Middle- 

sex North Temperance Society. Printed in The Nation (a temperance 
paper), Oct. 1866. 

1867 — Address at the Dedication of the Rooms of the Young Men's Christian 

Association of Lowell. Printed in the Lowell Daily Courier of April 5, 
1867. 

1868 — "The Sailor Entitled to our Practical Sympathy." Preached in Lowell. 

Printed in the Sailors' Magazine of March, 1868. 
1871 — Sermon Commemorative of Dea. Selwin Bancroft. Preached in Lowell. 
I873 _ " Duty of Faith and Enlargement in Foreign Missions." Preached in Lowell. 
1876 — " The Temperance Reform, its Agent, its Argument, its Method." Preached 

in Lowell. Printed in Vox Populi of April 22, 1876. 
1879 — Address at the Fortieth Anniversary of the John-street Church, Lowell. 
About twenty newspaper articles, printed mostly in The Congregationalist and in 

Lowell papers. 




JOHN-STREET CHURCH IN 1883, 



FUNERAL ADDRESS. 

By Rev. Owen Street, d. d., of Lowell, Mass. 



[The funeral of Dr. Foster took place on Thursday afternoon, April 
13, 1882. A private service was held at his house, his son offering the 
prayer. The public services were at the John-street Church, the Hon. 
George Stevens having supervision of the funeral, and Rev. J. B. Sea- 
bury having charge of the exercises. The walls of the church, the 
pulpit, and the pulpit chair were appropriately draped. Floral em- 
blems, contributed by the ladies of the society, the "Foster Club" (a 
young men's debating society connected with the church), and former 
parishioners, were abundant. The church was filled with the friends 
of the deceased. Rev. Owen Street, d. d., who had been associated in 
the city with Dr. Foster longer than any other Congregational minis- 
ter, preached the sermon, and Rev. J. B. Seabury offered prayer. 
Among other ministers present were Rev. J. M. Greene, d. d., and 
Rev. Smith Baker, of Lowell ; Rev. S. W. Hanks, of Cambridge, Mass., 
Dr. Foster's predecessor in the John-street pastorate ; Rev. Augustus 
Berry, of Pelham, N. H. ; Rev. DeWitt S. Clark, of Salem, Mass., and 
Rev. Samuel Bowker, of Dracut, Mass., several of whom assisted in 
the exercises. The selection of hymns was made from those specially 
dear to the departed, and the hymns were sung by those whose voices 
Dr. Foster had often heard with delight. The pall-bearers were chosen 
from among Dr. Foster's parishioners and valued friends. At the 
close of the service, in accordance with Dr. Foster's wish, often ex- 
pressed, his body was laid in the Lowell Cemetery, in the lot given 
him years since by his parishioners.] 

John 5 : 35. — "He was a burning and a shining light." 

These words from the lips of one who could never utter 
excessive eulogy or false praise, have told what was truest and 
best in many a noble life. Something like this is often said 



252 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

of one and another with an inferior meaning:. There is the 
light of a cheerful countenance that can kindle a like cheer- 
fulness in others ; there is the light of a sunny spirit that can 
dispel gloom from other minds ; there is the light and fire of 
energy and purpose and determination that can inspire with 
enterprise and lead to grand achievements ; there is the light 
of intelligence that can guide in paths that are safe and full 
of promise; there is the light of learning that can uncover 
treasures of knowledge ; there is the light of genius that can 
captivate and entrance. But not any one nor all of these can 
be the light of the world, in the sense that the Great Teacher 
intended. They are but the coruscations and glintings and 
iris hues that play around the candlestick on which the light 
is set. The candlestick is something; it is God's own work- 
manship, and proclaims the skill of the Creator. More than 
this: it exhibits the proof of his great design that it should 
give conspicuity and effect to the light; holding it forth where 
it is especially needed, and increasing its volume and power 
by a reflection and radiation of its own. Still more : the 
human candlestick becomes itself luminous with the divinely 
given light. All the pleasing glow of natural endowments 
or acquired accomplishments takes on a supernal brightness ; 
the cold light of the planet becomes the radiant fire of the 
star; and the star, by the law of growth that God has or- 
dained, enlarges its magnitude, leaves the measures of its 
own past and present illuminating power behind, and leaves 
many that have shone well by its side behind, even as they 
in turn are leaving others behind ; and the varying grades 
of these luminaries below give token of what is foretold of 
the heavenly firmament, where one star differs from another 
star in glory. The text, as you are well aware, was applied 
by our Lord to John the Baptist ; one so eminent among the 
great lights that God had given to the world, that the same 
infallible Authority declared that no one of them all was 
greater than be. He was, in an almost typical sense, a burn- 
ing and shining light. There was light and fire. There 
were wonderful gifts and special grace. There was the he- 



FUNERAL ADDRESS. 253 

roism of a noble nature, and the fearless loyalty to truth 
that is born of a thorough consecration to God. 

Good men are not necessarily alike. Those who are equally 
good send out the light of their goodness at different angles 
and with different effect. If the effects are equally valuable, 
the phenomena are different. We may characterize with the 
same words those who are widely different. We may say of 
such men as Chrysostom, Augustine, Huss, Wycliff, Luther, 
Baxter, Eliot, Fenelon, Whitefield, Edwards, Wilberforce, and 
Payson, though no two of them were alike, each one was a 
burning and shining light. 

With the same confidence and with a similar meaning we 
apply the words to this dear departed servant of God, whose 
removal we are mourning to-day. 

The brief limits of time to which I am necessarily restricted 
to-day forbid that I should repeat here the details of his his- 
tory, that have already been given to the public by the local 
press. It must be my part to set forth before you, so far as I 
may be able, this man of God as we have known him. This 
would be a most easy thing to do, if it were to be undertaken 
in a volume without stint of pages; for the material is ample, 
and the field to be traversed full of striking features and 
points of more than ordinary interest. The difficult thing 
to-day, is to select and keep things within their own proper 
proportions. 

First of all, we must have a moment for that remarkable 
home from which he came. How few examples, if any, can 
be pointed out in New England, or in Old England, or on 
this continent, or any other, of seven sons in one family, edu- 
cated in college, and six of them becoming ministers of the 
Gospel ! I know not where to look for them. Of these seven, 
this beloved brother was the first-born. Would you know 
how they all looked up to him ? One of them will tell us, in 
a letter written from Iowa only two weeks ago. 

"When the time comes to pass to the other side, there are 
dear ones to meet and welcome us there. You will make the 
majority of the brother and sister band at home at last, Wil- 



254 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

liam, Jonathan, Edward, Daniel, Charles, Eden; and after no 
long time, the other five. . . . Will father and mother 
receive and welcome all the eleven ? If we are so happy, all 
the younger members of the family will bring with me a meed 
of thanks to the oldest brother, whose course, often under 
circumstances of difficulty and depression, was an inspiration 
and a stimulus to us all. . . . The great grief of my spirit 
is, not that you are going home, but that I may not see you 
mount the chariot of glory." 

Let this same letter tell us one thing more that is significant, 
and is told in a few words. 

" As a family, we have all lived too fast ; not in the ordinary 
meaning of that phrase, but in a too free expenditure of nerve- 
force. We inherited from our mother an intense nervous 
organization. This was aggravated in the case of some of 
the family by unfavorable circumstances. With an ambition 
to render effective service, we have worked in a worry that has 
worn us rapidly." 

From this you see that it was something more than the 
mere fact of priority of birth that established upon him the 
birthright of leadership in that remarkable family. Did time 
permit, there could be no more interesting chapter than to 
trace the history, as I have heard him give it, of those 
brothers, and their noble record of service rendered to their 
country in the time of her great peril, and in the bitter 
conflict between the principles of freedom and slavery that 
preceded it ; and the still higher record of their service ren- 
dered directly to their God. But we must pass from this 
topic, and with the bare mention of his college life, and the 
important episode of nearly two years of labor as an instructor 
of youth in the academy of Pembroke, made doubly interest- 
ing by his marriage at -that time, and the time spent in the 
study of theology at Andover, and speak of his great life-work 
in the ministry of the Gospel. 

I have had before me the sermon that was preached at his 
ordination, by his uncle, Rev. Amos Foster, still living at the 
age of eighty-five years. Even here we read, as in all his sub- 
sequent life, of the young candidate for the pastoral office 



FUNERAL ADDRESS. 255 

"trembling with the feeling of his own insufficiency." This 
feeling never deserted him. It was out of this weakness that 
he was made strong. It was his constant leaning upon the 
arm of the Almighty, that gave him power both with God and 
with man. It was thus that he became so strong in faith, in 
prayer, and in his eloquent pleading with his fellow-men. 
That incipient ministry of forty years ago has a warm place 
in tender and grateful memories still. And so it has been all 
the way. In Henniker, in Pelham, in Lowell, in West Spring- 
field, there are testimonies in living hearts, and testimonies 
borne by the silent marble, that prove that he was no ordinary 
man. There was in his nature the charm of an unaffected 
modesty that won all hearts. He was too intelligent not to 
know his great strength with the people ; and the ever-fresh 
testimony that spoke out of the abundance of their hearts, 
kept him reminded of it ; and yet he was the most diffident 
and self-distrustful of all the public men I have ever known. 
One had need only to be in the pulpit with him, and see how, 
with all his self-command, and his complete consciousness of 
labored and ample preparation, the inevitable agitation brought 
a visible tremor upon his whole frame, to be thoroughly con- 
vinced that this was an element of his nature, deep-seated and 
unconquerable. And it was no weakness ; it was simply the 
harp trembling with the music of the strings. It was the 
mighty enginery of the soul straining and shaking all the tim- 
bers of the frame-work with which it was encased. There was 
no reaching after popular applause. His soul was too deeply 
freighted with the feeling of the responsibility of the hour for 
this, and he stood too near the infinite and the eternal to admit 
of it. What others have done, or attempted to do, by the 
graces of elocution, he did more effectively by the fervor of a 
holy faith, and a heart set on fire with his theme. The truth 
which he preached had full possession of him : it inspired 
him ; it transformed him. He believed it fully, and submitted 
his own nature to it, and felt through all his soul that a like 
submission was the one thing needful for those to whom he 
preached. 



256 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

The one overmastering principle of his life was the deep 
piety of his heart, an all-constraining love for the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and an all-subordinating devotion to His cause, and the 
promotion of His Gospel in the world. His Christian character 
was of the purest, kindliest, tenderest, and most conscientious 
type. He well illustrated in his conversation, and in all the 
spirit and temper of his life, the virtues that he preached. He 
has reminded me of the saying of Tillotson in regard to Bishop 
Berkeley, that "he had never thought so much learning, so 
much goodness, so much gentleness and humility and piety, 
could be the portion of any but angels, till he saw Mr. Berkeley." 
But our dear brother, though keyed to so gentle and tender a 
mold of spirit, was not lacking in those elements of character 
that give firmness and courage. There was in him the heroism 
of the true soldier and the unfaltering decision of the martyr. 
He did not wait to ascertain whether an idea, an enterprise, or 
a reform would be popular, before he espoused it. The only 
question was, Is it right ? Is it true ? Is it in the line of prog- 
ress which God approves, and which His Gospel aims to secure ? 
Let him ascertain this, and his mind was made up. With a 
spirit of universal courtesy and kindness towards those who 
differed from him, " with malice towards none, with charity for 
all," he girded himself for the fight, and never laid his armor 
by so long as he had strength to wear it. In 1860, he mod- 
estly said, in reply to a remark by Dr. Cleaveland, that he had 
at that time four hundred sermons prepared with such a de- 
gree of care and labor, that he did not know that he could 
improve them. These were his ordinary Sabbath sermons. 
Their number has since been greatly increased. But in addi- 
tion to these, he was constantly and earnestly laboring for the 
good of society, and for the benefit of his fellow-men, and 
especially of the young. "He was greatly interested in every 
enterprise of reform, and in all our institutions of education. 

His style was unmistakably and entirely his own. It was 
his own, not as his sermons and addresses were his own. These 
were the products of his art. The art and skill lay behind 



FUNERAL ADDRESS. 257 

them, and governed the forces of invention and reason and 
imagination that produced them. His style was his own, as 
his soul was his own ; as his memory, his ingenuity, his fancy, 
his zeal, his taste, were his own. Its genesis was from his own- 
deepest nature. It was deeper than any influence of instruc- 
tors, or authors, or rules ; it was deeper than any purpose, or 
plan, or model, that he may have entertained. It was wholly 
from within. It was not made, but born. It was not built ; 
it grew. It was not woven as the figured tapestry ; it sent 
out its forming jets and currents as the crystal, or rather as 
the life-forces in the growing child. 

He was not an imitator; he was an originator. And this 
made him superior to artificial rules. He was not superior to 
principles of chaste composition and good taste ; for good 
taste was one of his principles. The careful student of any of 
his more labored productions, cannot fail to see how he pruned 
the luxuriance of nature, and chastened the exuberance of 
fancy, and curbed the excess of metaphor, by the severe disci- 
pline of an unsparing taste. But this was as the constraint 
which a man sometimes puts upon his natural gait in walking. 
You are at no loss to see what belongs to him by nature, and 
wherein he has put himself to the task of correcting what he 
regards as defects of nature, or as the outcome of previous 
neglect. 

His style was, first of all, clear. He knew what he wanted 
to say, and he knew how to say it in such a way as not to be 
misunderstood. His style was in this respect like the most 
transparent glass ; or like the pure, undisturbed water of a 
quiet lake, as I have seen it under a strong artificial illumina- 
tion at night, where you could look down through to the bot- 
tom, and see every pebble that was lying there. This was a 
great excellence of his style, and gave him great power in his 
preaching. It was forcible as well as clear. If our language 
had one word better fitted than another for his purpose, it 
could not well escape him ; he was sure to have it, — the word 
that was surest, and the word that was strongest. He knew 
how to make his thought clear, moreover, and strong as well. 



258 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

by a copious use of well-put antitheses and contrasts ; and 
these were not unfrequently rounded off by a startling climax 
of great beauty and power. His style would be pronounced 
ornate, but for the suggestion which that word carries of a 
direct endeavor in the way of adornment. This every one 
who knew him well would unhesitatingly repudiate. Indeed, 
a single hour's conversation with him would settle the point 
for any person of ordinary discernment, that he had no occa- 
sion to seek for metaphors, or tropes, or felicitous turns of ex- 
pression, or ornamentation of any kind. These came almost 
unbidden, and seemed as natural as his breath. 

His style has been compared to that of Jeremy Taylor. It 
is by no means strange that any one should be reminded of 
that eminent man ; for there was certainly this in common, — 
great fertility of thought, a most facile command of fitting 
incidents and imagery, and the capacity to soar in marvelous 
flights of sublime and tender feeling. But there is this differ- 
ence : when listening to Dr. Foster you felt sure that the warm 
breathings of his soul were never alloyed with anything that 
was artificial ; and when he essayed his loftiest flights, you were 
never conscious of the fear that your aeronaut had forgotten 
his ballast. It was so natural for him to put things clearly, 
and to adorn whatever he wrote with the pleasing graces of 
his style, that his opponent in an argument had always occa- 
sion to thank him for a better statement of his position than 
lie could have given himself. I well remember an occasion 
when, at the close of a united service, in which Dr. Foster had 
unsparingly dissected the monstrosity of modern pantheism, 
the lamented Dr. Blanchard, himself a fine master of the Eng- 
lish language, after expressing an emphatic commendation of 
the discourse, remarked,, that he had been exercised with a 
momentary fear, while listening to the opening statement of 
the error he had been combatting, that he was making it at- 
tractive by a more fascinating dress of language than its advo- 
cates had ever been able to command. The reply brought out 
the fact that it was a point of conscience with him to give the 
other side the advantage of as fair a statement as he could. 



FUNERAL ADDRESS. 259 

The one feature of his style, which all will remember best, 
was that in which he most resembled the Rev. Phillips Brooks ; 
a feature that, as related to his rapid delivery, was both cause 
and effect, each reacting on the other. But it had a deeper 
source. It was born of the impetuous fervor of his heart, and 
the warm, earnest, gushing pathos of his Christian zeal ; the 
feeling that he had a point to carry for his Master, that must 
be carried as by an onset. It seemed like the momentum of a 
squadron of cavalry in a charge, — every spur drawing blood, 
and everything depending on their reaching the opposing bat- 
tery and dealing the decisive blow in a moment of time. 

It must not be supposed that the deep earnestness of his 
nature, and his engrossment in spiritual themes, left no place 
for those lighter chords which God has strung in the human 
harp. His brethren in the ministry, and many others, knew 
him better than that. He had a vein of genuine humor, suited 
indeed to the delicacy of his whole nature, but nimble and 
bright, and near enough to the surface to come easily into play 
on fit occasions. 

There was many a Monday morning, when the five pastors 
were gathered in Dr. Blanchard's study, and he admirably con- 
tributed his part in the life of the conversation, the innocent 
sparkle of wit, and the flow of soul. For this, as for all his 
work, he was well provided by the extent of his reading, the 
quickness of his memory, his treasures of incident and anec- 
dote, and his knowledge of general history. 

His aptness in the fitting use of incidents is beautifully 
illustrated in his closing words at the fortieth anniversary of 
the John-street Church. 

"It is related," said he, "of Gen. Winfield Scott, at the bat- 
tle of Lundy's Lane, that in the midst of the conflict he was 
wounded ; that after that, with his arms and neck and breast 
all bathed in gore, he rode up to a group of athletic, brave 
young men (a portion of them his staff), and said to them : 'I 
am weak and faint with loss of blood ; I request one of these 
vigorous young men to mount my horse before me, and allow 
me to cling to him for support, while we ride forward once 



260 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

more to encourage the army, and complete the victory begun.' 
One of these young men, valiant and strong, obeyed the re- 
quest. General Scott put his arms around him, and they 
plunged again into the battle. Three years ago I endeavored 
to secure, and through the favor of God, through the gener- 
osity of this people, through the consecration of my beloved 
young brother to a great work, I did secure a wise, strong, 
sympathetic soldier, ardent in his love to the cause, and in his 
devotion to the church, to hold me up. He has nobly done it 
thus far, but he could not do it longer, and no one could. 
Wounded, and faint, and fallen, I lie before this church, and 
there, in all human probability, I must lie till the end shall 
come." 

And now, dear brethren and friends, the " end " has " come." 
It has come through a long wrestling with disease and pain. 
There have been sharp conflicts and agonies of the flesh, such 
as few are called to endure. But the spirit has been calm, 
trustful, serene, and resigned. The good fight of faith has 
been fought through to the end, and the victory won. I have 
spoken for you all. Allow me one word of tender and affection- 
ate tribute for myself. I have known him longer and perhaps 
better than most of his brethren in the ministry, outside of his 
own kindred. I remember the brotherly kindness with which 
he received me when I first came to Lowell, and the judicious 
and timely words of encouragement from him, which were 
especially helpful then. Many a time he filled a place as an 
angel strengthening me, which there was no other to fill. I 
gratefully acknowledge a large debt of gratitude to the other 
brethren whom I then met in these Lowell pulpits, and to 
those who have succeeded them. But that which I owe to the 
memory of this dear, saintly brother, stands by itself. It was 
a last proof of his kindness, that I am permitted, at his request, 
to say for his brethren and friends these parting words. 

What a legacy, dearly beloved friends of his kindred, and 
brethren of this church, and fellow-citizens of Lowell, all ye 
who have known him, is the memory of such a man, such a 
husband, such a father, such a brother, such a pastor, such a 
citizen, such a faithful, patient toiler beyond his strength, — » 



FUNERAL ADDRESS. 261 

giving himself in weariness and painfulness to these manifold 
labors for our good ! 

No better words can I find to close these remarks than his 
own, delivered at the funeral of a pastor whom he especially 
loved: — 

" We believe that our friend and brother is now wearing the 
crown, and that in the Judgment and throughout eternity 
many will render thanksgiving to God for his example and in- 
fluence. We believe that the righteousness of Christ with its 
glory and its radiance enfolds him, and that communion with 
Christ will henceforth be his joy and reward. We rejoice in 
the confident hope that he has entered into rest, — rest from 
toil and care and pain and sin and grief, into that rest where 
they cease not day nor night crying, 'Holy, holy, holy art 
Thou, Lord God Almighty.' 

" While his spirit rests not, his body sleeps sweetly, and the 
graves of his own people are around him. As in the patience 
of hope and the labors of love he had lived among them, so 
among them in the calm triumph of the true Christian he died. 
His works do follow him. The seeds of truth which he has 
sown in other hearts will be watered by the tears that em- 
balm his memory. And from the firmament whither he 
has ascended will shine another star to guide them on their 
way." 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 

By Bev. J. M. Greene, d. d., of Lowell, Mass. 



[The esteem and love of the Sunday-school for Dr. Foster found 
expression in a Memorial Service on Sunday evening, May 15, 1882. 
The attendance was very large, considering the fact that a heavy rain 
was falling at the time, and much interest and sympathy were shown. 
The first exercise was a responsive service, entitled "The Life and 
Death of the Righteous," in which, in response to questions by the 
leader, A. K. Whitcomb, Esq., nearly forty of the most precious of the 
many quotations from the Bible, which would be appropriate to such 
an occasion, were repeated by members of the school. Rev. J. M. 
Greene, d. d., of the Eliot Church, Lowell, followed with the com- 
memorative address, which is given below.] 

It is a pleasant yet sad task that has been assigned me 
to-night. I love to think of the life and character of the good 
man whose memory we have assembled to recall ; but I do 
not love to feel that in the flesh we shall see him no more. He 
is not dead ; he lives beyond the skies. Jesus said : " Who- 
soever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Our dear 
father and friend did "live and believe"; therefore he is not 
dead. We do not take the comfort which we might in the 
Word of God, because we do not more than half believe it. 
Our dear friend never lived so truly and so bounteously as 
now. The life in the flesh is as nothing, compared with the 
life before the throne of God. He is now one of " the spirits 
of the just made perfect," and is glorious far beyond the 
power of words to express. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 263 

The first remark which I would make about Dr. E. B. 
Foster, is, that he was truly a great man. 

Twenty-five years ago I saw and heard Dr. Foster at Am- 
herst College. He came there when I was a student, and one 
evening gave an address before the Society of Inquiry. I was 
then a mere boy, but the address made such an impression on 
me, that I can now tell not only the theme on which he dis- 
coursed, but the heads and no little part of the discourse itself. 
I can tell the very place where I sat as I listened to the dis- 
course, the person who sat by my side, and our remarks when 
the service was over. 

But to show that this is not a singular instance of his power 
of impressing his subjects, I will state that the only other 
times when I heard Dr. Foster speak, before I came to Lowell, 
were his preaching a sermon at the installation of his brother 
Roswell, in Westhampton, Mass., in the year 1856, and his 
delivering an address before the Massachusetts Teachers' In- 
stitute, in 1860. Though twenty-seven years have elapsed 
since the sermon was heard, and twenty-three since the lec- 
ture, yet they are in my mind with remarkable freshness. 

Now I claim that he who can impress himself like this upon 
a youthful mind, is a great man. There is something far be- 
yond the ordinary range of writers and preachers, either in his 
thought or in his way of presenting it. There was a wonder- 
ful sincerity about the man. You felt as you heard him, that 
every word and syllable and letter had been weighed, and that 
he was pouring it forth, not for effect, but to reach your soul 
and influence your life for good. The spirit of self-sacrifice 
was in the very bearing and tones of the man. And that was 
a mighty element of his power. There was an entire self-ab- 
negation, and a going forth of soul and grasping for high and 
holy uses the souls of all who heard him. 

When he was rapt away in his highest strains of oratory, it 
was as the rushing of mighty waters, and his audience was 
often breathless, as if they expected the breaking in of a flood; 
yet he was always self-possessed. There was nothing wild or 
extravagant in his manner or utterance, but he seemed like 



264 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

one who had hold of the very throne of God, and was urging 
men to come and enjoy what he knew to be a substantial 
good. A man who has the power thus to seize his audience 
and bear it along with him, is a great man indeed. Some 
speakers achieve their results through the tricks of oratory ; 
but there was no trickery in Dr. Foster. He was an Israelite 
in whom was no guile. He went straight and honestly at his 
work. He told his hearers what he wanted of them, and set 
himself with no indirectness or strategem to bring them to 
his objective point. He held you often so spell-bound that it 
was with a sense of relief when he had done. He carried you 
aloft so high, that if you did not surrender yourself to him, 
you felt almost dizzy, and fear lest you should fall would creep 
over you. 

I think his greatness as an orator consisted in a remarkable 
union of solid and affluent thought, and rich and glowing words 
to express it. It was not verbiage, — for that is shallow, and 
soon becomes powerless to move the hearer. It was not 
thought alone, — for that is ponderous, and soon wearies the 
hearer. The great though t-preachers, without imagination 
and fervency of speech, have produced treatises to be read, 
but they often had little power before an audience. Dr. Fos- 
ter's sermons, should they be printed, will delight the reader, 
as with him to utter them they delighted the hearer. 

Another thing to be said about Dr. Foster, is, that he was a 
man of great apparent timidity, but of real courage. There 
was no flourishing of trumpets, no bombast of manner, no 
brass in his make, but a shrinking from the public gaze and a 
self-retirement, which are, in the minds of many, associated 
with faint-heartedness. The Duke of Wellington once said 
that no one knew how much he had suffered in anticipation of 
a battle. His whole nature shrank from it. Yet when he was 
in it, he was lion-hearted. Dr. Chalmers said he never went 
into a pulj)it to preach, except with quaking knees. We all 
know that when the work was begun, Chalmers was very 
boldness itself. I think this shows what true courage is. It 
is not to be destitute of fear ; only fools are that. He who 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 



265 



comprehends what is involved in the issue of an important 
act, may well tremble in view of it. As Wellington foresaw 
the bloodshed and anguish of the battle-field, his whole nature 
cried out, " Oh ! that I could escape it ! " As Chalmers thought . 
how the words which he should utter would be a savor of 
death to some, as well as a savor of life to others, he trem- 
bled at the thought of standing as a spokesman between sin- 
ful men and a holy God. Yet two more courageous men never 
lived than Wellington and Chalmers. They went intelligently 
into the conflict, and retired not till the victory was won. 
Dr. Foster was a man of the same stamp. He had a clear, 
full, even painful comprehension of what is involved in being 
a preacher of the Gospel. He never entered the pulpit but 
the weight of a mountain seemed to rest upon him. Gladly 
would he escape if he could. But he was an ambassador of 
God ; he was under a commission from the Most High, and 
must speak ; and he did speak, as " a dying man to dying 
men." His sense of responsibility was deep and keen. He 
always spoke in love, but always with plainness, and with an 
urgency that pressed itself upon the souls of men. He never 
turned aside from a truth because it would not be relished by 
the natural heart. He. never blunted the edge of the sword 
of the Spirit lest it should cut into and expose hidden lusts. 
He never diluted a doctrine because it was too strong. That 
would have shown pusillanimity and faint-heartedness, — not a 
particle of which he had. He felt that God was to be feared, 
rather than men; which thought filled him with courage to 
do his whole duty. He did not hesitate to warn men of their 
danger, describing it to them fully. The self-righteous hearer 
did not receive any flattery from his lips. The hearer who 
was entranced with the eloquence of his words found that 
there was sense in what he heard, as well as sound. There 
were home-thrusts of truth, sharp and scathing rebukes of sin, 
deep and pitiless unfoldings of iniquity in the heart, a merci- 
less analysis of the purposes and motives which govern men's 
lives ; and with it all was the tenderness of a woman and the 
gentleness of a child. 
18 



266 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

These qualities manifest courage in its highest forms. Not 
thoughtless, brutal courage, — cowards possess that, — but a 
virtue which springs from a holy purpose, and dwells deep 
down in the soul, showing itself when the occasion requires. 
Had Dr. Foster lived in the times of persecution, he would 
have been a martyr. Had his ministry fallen in an era when 
the doctrines of his faith were assailed, he would have been 
among the foremost of the champions of the truth, using both 
the spear and the sword. He did not know what it was to 
turn his back upon duty. He always faced it, and was as 
immovable as the everlasting hills. No one was more chari- 
table than he. He had no bigotry in his make. He recog- 
nized and fellowshipped goodness wherever he found it. He 
was a man of broad views, of liberal impulses, of generous 
emotions, but of a fixed and determined purpose. His face 
was set like a flint to serve the Lord, and nothing could divert 
him. He was true to Him as the magnet is to the pole. No 
fear of man, no flattery, no temporizing considerations, ever 
caused him to waver in the least from his great purpose to be 
a servant of Christ. 

I call this courage. On the battle-field it makes a Grant or 
Wellington; wherever the rack and the stake were used, it 
makes a Cranmer or Ridley ; in times of reform, a Luther or 
a Melanchthon. All that was needed was the occasion to cause 
the virtue to stand out in bas-relief in his life. It existed, and 
had ambition or self-conceit co-existed with it, they would 
have created opportunities for its display. As it was, mod-* 
esty, reserve, diflidence, held him to a calm, unpretentious, 
humble, unostentatious use of his powers, not for the glory of 
self, but for the honor of God and the good of man. " He 
that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city." 
Dr. Foster did this. The true hero was in him, peering out 
in every sermon or lecture, yet never making any display. 

Another thing to be said about Dr. Foster is, that he had 
the genius of labor. "The labor we delight in physics pain." 
Dr. Foster took that physic freely. But he was not singular 
in this. Genius is often only a power to labor. In the life of 



* MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 267 

Horace Mann are the words : " From the time when I accepted 
the secretaryship, in June, 1837, until May, 1848, when I ten- 
dered my resignation of it, I labored in this cause [the cause of 
public education] an average of not less than fifteen hours a 
day; from the beginning to the end of this period, I never 
took a single day for relaxation, and months and months 
together passed without my withdrawing a single evening 
from working hours to call upon a friend." That is the way 
in which a great man worked. Mr. Gladstone is an unwearied 
and incessant toiler. Nothing comes to him by intuition. He 
illustrates the old proverb, Omnia labori dant Dei. You had 
only to hear one of Dr. Foster's sermons or lectures to be im- 
pressed with the pains which he bestowed upon everything. 
If you went into his study you would see evidences of toil on 
every hand. I am not aware that he had any specialty in the 
line of his work. He did not stand out with great prominence 
among his brethren as an exegete in biblical studies, nor was 
he marked as a logician, nor as a metaphysician, nor as a 
student of the original languages of the Bible ; but he rather 
combined a degree of excellence in all these departments, 
with a marvelous general knowledge, and permeated and suf- 
fused the whole with an extraordinary zeal, an affluence of 
speech, and an ornament of rhetoric, which made him to be 
one of the most eloquent of modern pulpit orators. I do not 
think he ever did anything for effect or for show. His ruling 
purpose in everything was to do his work well for the good it 
might do. He said he often trembled for himself when he 
was to address hundreds of immortal souls on themes affect- 
ing their eternal interests, and he had made so imperfect prep- 
aration for it. He realized the importance of right words as 
well as right thoughts. He labored that he might be a work- 
man who, in the world to come, when he will stand face to 
face with his work, might not be ashamed. 

Dr. Foster spent very little time, perhaps not enough for 
his relaxation and health, in social life. He was no ascetic in 
spirit; he was not morose, not a censurer; he simply could 
not, as he thought, in view of the limitations placed upon him 



268 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. * 

by imperfect health, spare the time. He felt the presence of 
his work. It was a stupendous thing which he was doing 
every week, preparing a message to be delivered to souls who 
might never hear the Gospel again. This so weighed upon 
him that he could not take for pleasure any time from the 
desk when his work was being done. 

God gave him a robust frame, and one of the best constitu- 
tions that ever mortal man had, or he would have been crushed 
under his labors many years earlier than he was. He put his 
whole life as well as his time into his work. Like Paul he 
could say : " This one thing I do." 

His work is done ; yes, well done. His reward is complete. 
He was faithful in the trust committed to him, and he has 
heard the Master's word of approval. The crown of eternal 
life is his. That aching heart is at rest ; those twinging nerves 
no longer agonize with pain, but thrill with joy; the heart 
that beat so feebly here, is steady and strong in its pulsations 
now ; earth, with all its anxieties, fears, troubles, toils, has 
done with him, and he is now in heaven, before the Father's 
throne, in the society of Jesus whom he loved and served, 
with the ransomed throng who sing the song of Moses and the 
Lamb. There we can leave him, with the hope that when the 
time of our departure comes we may meet him in the heavenly 
land, and have communion with him forevermore. 



SELECTED 



ADDRESSES AND SERMONS, 



DELIVERED BY 



REV. EDEN B. FOSTER, D. D. 



THE ELOQUENCE OF EXPIRING NATIONS. 



[The following address was delivered by Dr. Foster at his graduation from 
Dartmouth College in 1837. He was then, it will he observed, twenty-four years 
old. Eeference to this address is made in the Biographical Sketch on page 36. 
The address is inserted as an interesting illustration of the fact, that by the 
time a young man leaves college his faculties are substantially developed, and 
he is tolerably certain to display the same qualities that will characterize him 
in after life. We find in this Commencement address the same methods of 
treatment and the same graces of style which marked Dr. Foster's compositions 
in after years.] 

Death himself is eloquent. But not only does he reason 
eloquently himself; he imparts to his victims a spirit and 
power of eloquence rarely attained in days of health. It is 
not the individual alone whose expiring moments are charac- 
terized by vividness and reach of conception, by depth of 
emotion, and by propriety of expression, unknown before. 
The intellect of nations is endowed at the last with extra- 
ordinary energy and sagacity ; the national sensibility is highly 
excited, and, at such a crisis, men are seldom wanting who 
can give that intellect and that sensibility tongue. 

If adversity falling upon the individual demands the highest 
human powers to conceive the momentous results and to de- 
pict the consequent evils, surely when nations are approaching 
the devouring whirlpool, where myriads of men will be swal- 
lowed up, it needs an angel's caj)acity either to perceive or to 
make known the amount of woe. If those highly-gifted men, 
who sometimes appear on this troubled theatre, may be sup- 
posed ever to exert supernatural energies, it is when their 
beloved country, their own fellow-citizens, comprising the par- 
takers of their blood, the friends of their heart, the children of 



272 MEMORIAL OF EEV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

their love, are sucked within the resistless eddy, and are gliding 
swiftly and fearfully on towards the overwhelming vortex. 
They may hope* for rescue, for hope leaves us but with life. 
In the vehement workings of their minds, they devise ways 
of escape, and urge them upon the attention of others with 
address and ability which despair alone could originate. They 
put forth powers of persuasion which would have been entirely 
beyond their reach at a moment of less intense excitement; 
even as the leader of an army who is on the battle-field in the 
midst of circling foes, liable to be borne down by numbers, 
and sensible that the fate of his soldiers depends ujjon his own, 
with his red right hand, now nerved with tremendous power, 
hews his way through opposing ranks, dashes aside the closing 
combatants, and escapes by means of sheer strength, which at 
any other time he could not have exerted. 

It is in times of serious disaster that the great men of a 
country are most abundant, most energetic, most impressive. 
The eloquence of a nation is a compound made up of the 
various kinds of eloquence which distinguish the addresses of 
its eminent men. A single individual, however remarkable 
for superiority of discourse, seldom if ever exhibits all the 
qualities which go to form a perfect model of human eloquence. 
A nation may contain, at the same time, different men in whom 
are to be found all these qualities ; and if any period of its 
existence is more likely than another to produce such men, it 
is the period of its downfall. There are then exciting causes 
sufficient to rouse the orator's utmost energies. His liberty, 
his life, his friends, his country, are in danger. There is a 
feeling of apprehension abroad. It communicates from mind 
to mind, it grows in intensity, and it kindles in many a bosom 
a flame of indignation which erelong bursts forth bright and 
scorching. A man is eloquent when he makes you feel, but 
he must feel himself, — he must feel the inspiration of im- 
portant, appropriate thought, the working of true and deep 
emotion. Occasions do not often happen, even in the lapse of 
ages, in which either individuals or nations are wrought up to 
the highest pitch of feeling and of mental action. It is only 



THE ELOQUENCE OF EXPIRING NATIONS. 273 

during periods of violent commotion, when all is at stake and 
a people are conscious that they must do or die, that we 
may look for the most powerful and impressive eloquence. 
When the sovereignty of Greece was no more, when apathy 
had fallen upon her people and luxury upon her palaces, when 
her love for letters and science and art was passing away, 
Demosthenes appeared, fervid in spirit, patriotic in design, 
discerning in thought, lucid in style, bold in denunciation, 
pungent in satire, vehement in utterance. The Roman 
republic fell by the machinations of ambitious and dissolute 
men ; and by the same fratricidal hands was shed the blood of 
Cicero, the most renowned orator of the Eternal City, her 
glory, and, more than once, her defence. 

The eloquence of expiring nations has its distinctive fea- 
tures. Among them are sincerity, earnestness, and condensa- 
tion. When a man is pleading in a capital cause, and that the 
cause of a whole people, he eschews all banter, all trifling, all 
digressions. Grief, anxiety, and determination displace every 
minor emotion. Every power of mind, every energy of feel- 
ing, every acquisition of experience and study, is brought to 
bear, in devising and enforcing plans for safety. He cannot 
be insincere, for his own welfare is identified with that of the 
nation. He cannot be lukewarm, for his dearest rights and 
privileges are exposed to destruction. He cannot be tedious, 
for he turns with disgust from even the slightest observa- 
tion or superfluous allusion, which may hinder his swift and 
undeviating advance towards the object in view. He hunts 
not for flowers nor tinsel decorations; he. seeks only the 
substantial, the pertinent, the efficient. Every word bears 
upon the point at issue, and is fraught with the weightiest 
truth. 

When the events of society are at rest, or where oppression 
fetters the mind and restrains discussion, there is little oppor- 
tunity for the display of true eloquence. The patriot may 
mourn in secret over the ignorance, the degradation, the 
supineness, the wrongs of his countrymen, but it avails not to 
utter his griefs aloud. The philosopher silently stores his 



274 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

mind with truth, and pushes his inquiries farther into the 
undiscovered regions of science ; but he has few facilities for 
spreading knowledge abroad and speaking forth its praise. If 
he possess an enthusiastic temperament and enlarged views 
respecting man's capabilities for improvement, he may con- 
verse privately with animation and effect, and, provided he 
can procure an enlightened, attentive audience, he may con- 
vey instruction and entertainment ; but at such times the 
philosopher cannot interest the multitude. He calls upon 
them to think, and they shrink from the task. They are too 
much engrossed by the calls of business and the pleasures of 
sense, to attend to the exhortations of him who would lead 
them to seek first mental and moral excellence. They fail to 
comprehend and appreciate his ideas. They are not familiar 
with the words used as signs of thought, and they cannot 
understand his meaning. Hence he labors under great disad- 
vantages. He can catch no ardor from their countenances, no 
encouragement from their subsequent actions. A man cannot 
be eloquent if speaking to stocks and stones. Even if he speaks 
to an assembly of educated, contemplative men, who can enter 
into all his views and who admit the vital importance of intel- 
lectual cultivation, the nature of his subject confines him 
to abstract precepts and general principles. 

When the constitution of a state is trampled upon ; when 
despots begin to grind the faces of those who were once free, 
or anarchy comes in like a flood ; when corruption twines its 
serpent folds around every limb of the body politic, and dif- 
fuses its venom through all the life-blood ; when civil broils and 
disregard of law prevail; when fraud, injustice, licentiousness, 
violence, and murder stalk abroad through the land, foretoken- 
ing the speedy sundering of all social ties, the rapid approach 
of Barbarism and Moral Night, announcing with unerring cer- 
tainty that " Mene, Mene" is written by a bodiless hand, and 
that thraldom, mental, moral, and civil, is the nation's inevit- 
able portion, — then it is that some son of the degenerate soil 
starts up, girt with strength, pure in the midst of pollution, 
eagle-eyed where all else are blind, and with a heart full of 



THE ELOQUENCE OF EXPIRING NATIONS. 275 

fearful foreboding for his native land, but with a determined 
purpose to devote himself for his country, and save her, or be 
crushed in her ruins, erects the standard of reform, spreads 
abroad the banner of truth, and, with self-denying, unremitted 
zeal, endeavors to rally around that standard and under those 
folds a band of co-workers in the great design of regenerating 
the government and the people. He lifts up his voice like a 
trumpet, and sounds a startling alarm. He adjures his coun- 
trymen by the memory of their former glory, of their days of 
valor, magnanimity, virtue, and prosperity, by the memory of 
the deeds of their ancestors, and by the thought of the desti- 
nies of their children, to pause, to renounce their madness, and 
to retrace their steps. And though his warning voice be dis- 
regarded, though it fail to stay the tide of desolation, yet it 
will ring in the ears of the devoted nation till the last gasp, 
and its echoes will then be heard in other lands. 



THE DULL SCHOLAR 



AN ADDRESS TO TEACHERS. 



[The following address was delivered repeatedly at Teachers' Institutes 
throughout Massachusetts. Some mention of its preparation and of the circum- 
stances under which it and kindred addresses were delivered, may be found on 
page 119 of the Biographical Sketch. Dr. Foster was an ardent student of biog- 
raphy, deeply in sympathy with child-life, and a warm friend of education. All 
these facts in his character find abundant illustration in the essay given below. 
The address, with suitable modifications, was once delivered from the pulpit as a 
sermon, from the text in Exodus 2 : 9: " Take this child away and nurse it for me, 
and I will give thee thy wages." Dr. Foster took a wide range in his pulpit, and 
regarded a sermon to parents on the education of their children, such as he 
made out of this address, as entirely appropriate.] 



How shall the teacher educate the dull scholar? 

I. Educate the indifferent child as much as possible through 
the agency of his senses. He has not yet reached the age for 
introversion of thought and for deep reflection. The facul- 
ties of perception are active ; the faculties of meditation are 
dormant. He is quick to see and admire the forms of propor- 
tion and order, quick to hear and appreciate the sounds of 
melody. Knowledge comes into the mind through the eye 
with a speed like that of the rays of light as they glance from 
star to star. The eye has a wider circle of observation than 
any of the other senses, and it seems to be more directly and 
emphatically the instrument of the soul. How little can you 
learn of the bird from its song, or of the sheep from its bleat, 
or of any irrational creature from the utterances of its voice, 
compared with the knowledge secured by careful scrutiny with 
the eye. And when you come to the inanimate creation, 
where there are only inarticulate murmurs of winds, and rus- 



THE DULL SCHOLAR. 



277 



tling of leaves, and gurgling of brooks, and dashing of waves, 
all other methods of investigation are without efficacy com- 
pared to the searchings of the eye. Instruct the child by dia- 
grams ; attract his attention by pictures ; imprint truth 
upon his memory by the distinct impressions of outward form. 
Stimulate the mind, arouse emotion, by something of the same 
philosophy which leads the Romanist to use imposing cere- 
monies and scenic representations for the purposes of his re- 
ligion. He may pervert the doctrines of Scripture, and may 
make the form an auxiliary of error and superstition. The 
teacher has all the power which the Romanist so ingeniously 
uses, and he employs it for the victories of science, and for 
stirring the higher faculties of the youthful mind. 

It is well for us, in the school and in the family, having the 
great instrument of human language and the mysterious power 
of human speech, to pour thoughts into the soul through the 
ear ; but after all, there is no knowledge so vivid as that which 
the eye conveys. It is impossible for the blind child to learn 
as rapidly and as accurately as other children can ; and it is 
only after the round of science has been run, and the faculty 
of meditation takes the place of the faculty of observation, as 
in the case of Milton, of Prescott, of Milburn, that the agency 
of the eye can be lost without irreparable disaster to the 
progress of mind. There are certain barbarous tribes who 
fasten the plow to the horns of the ox, not adjusting the 
harness to the neck and shoulders, not placing the draft where 
the muscular strength lies. We are in danger of committing 
a similar mistake in the instruction of our children, appealing 
to those faculties which are not natural to their age, and which 
cannot yet be aroused without a dangerous precocity. We 
teach them abstractions, when we should bring before them 
concrete truths ; we attempt to be logical and profound, 
when we should use simple illustration and personification ; 
we attempt to make their judgment mature, and to build up 
in their mind a system of propositions and of proofs, when 
their perceptions have not yet collected the necessary facts, 
and their memory has not accumulated its store of rudimental 



278 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

truths, and their intuitive consciousness has not been roused 
to action. As well might you ask the chrysalis to soar in air 
before it is changed into the butterfly. Follow the order of 
nature. Appeal to the senses of the child. First, the great 
facts of the world, which are potent to every eye ; then the 
laws and relations of things. First, the observation and the 
memory; then the inward reflection and the higher reason. 

It has sometimes been thought a very great wonder, that 
men like Patrick Henry, seemingly listless for years, roaming 
in the woods, idling in the fields, lolling in the garden, should 
spring suddenly, and to all beholders unexpectedly, to the very 
front rank of the illustrious thinkers and speakers of the age. 
Is not this the explanation ? They had used the eye and the 
ear to some purpose. They had developed their faculties by 
the simple, natural process which God appoints. They had 
looked into the book of creation. They had heard the har- 
monies of nature. They had been observant of men. They 
lived at an hour when histories were transacted. They had 
listened to conversations and discussions. % When earnest re- 
flection came, it came not through the usual agencies of 
schools and of books, but it came like the gushing fountain 
from the hill-side, with spontaneous, outbursting, irresistible 
force. Thomas Lord Erskine was educated by the prairies of 
America in his military campaigns ; Rev. Dr. Ellery Channing 
was educated by the surges of the sounding sea; Daniel 
Webster was educated by the sombre darkness and the rugged 
crags of the Salisbury mountains. If such men have the cul- 
ture of the higher schools and the college, it is all the better; 
but it is this education of the child, bringing out his faculties 
in the order which God appoints, giving to his thoughts the 
vividness, the impressiveness, and the energy which the teach- 
ings of nature secure, which more than aught else is the secret 
of his genius and of his ultimate power. Let the teacher 
have the sagacity to be a co-worker with nature here. Teach 
geography by globes, by maps, by blackboard drawings; as 
far as possible, teach it by the round world itself. So of other 
elementary sciences, — make all knowledge plain by some 
form or other of illustration. 



THE DULL SCHOLAR. 279 

I have sometimes entered a school, and been distressed 
by the dull inattention and the apparent incapacity of the 
scholars. The lesson was an important one, the teacher 
seemed to understand it, you would suppose the child ought to 
know it; but blank faces, inconsequent answers, or utter silence, 
were all the responses to the questions proposed. I have been 
into the same school a second time, under another teacher and 
under a different system of instruction, and have been utterly 
surprised to see those stupid scholars making easy and rapid 
progress in their studies. Those blank faces were lighted 
with thought ; those sluggish forms were alert with action ; 
those dumb tongues were vocal with quick and accurate replies. 
What was the cause? The teacher d^d not love children any 
better; the teacher did not understand science any better; 
the teacher had not any larger gifts. But a new avenue had 
been found to the child's understanding. By object lessons, 
by illustrative methods of communicating truth, by simplicity 
and clearness of explanation, by a magnetic enthusiasm im- 
parted from the teacher to the child, the scholar was waked up. 
He was asleep before; he was alive and in earnest now. This 
is the chief benefit of foreign travel. The student visiting 
other countries, studying monuments of art, meditating on 
battle-fields, gazing on the broad lake and the towering moun- 
tain, witnessing unaccustomed habits of society, beholding 
the conduct of different classes of men, is not acquiring 
knowledge unknown to scholars before, never recorded in 
books, never recited in human ears, but he is acquiring 
knowledge by methods to which he had been unused. He 
learns by the eye, by the ear, by every sense. The body becomes 
the facile instrument of the soul, the eager auxiliary of the 
mind. He gains not only a new sensation, but unwonted 
avenues of thought are opened, by which knowledge easily 
enters the mind, and deeply stamps itself upon the memory 
and the heart. 

When John Adams went to France as ambassador of the 
new Republic, he took with him his son, John Quincy, a boy 
ten years of age. He employed in Paris the most accom- 
plished instructor he could find to teach himself the French 



280 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

language. He spent long sessions of every day in earnest and 
absorbing study, to prepare himself to converse in their own 
vernacular with foreign statesmen. He had shorter and 
more careless lessons given to his son, and then allowed him, 
during the larger part of each day, to associate with French 
boys, and play and talk and idle away the hours with them. 
The boy learned the French tongue far more rapidly than the 
father, not because he had any more genius, not because he 
studied any harder (he did not study half so much), but 
because eye and ear and every sense were helping him to 
learn; because a thousand outward objects were arresting his 
attention, and he was giving to them names ; because the 
memory of the child is developed before his reasoning facul- 
ties, and that is the hour for learning a language. Now the 
teacher, who by skilful arrangements and by ingenious con- 
trivances can come the nearest to the methods by which 
John Quincy Adams learned the French language, the nearest 
to means similar to those by which the foreign tourist acquires 
information, will be most likely to rouse up the dull minds of 
lethargic children, and to bring the school into a condition of 
intense love for study. It is not a vain thing for even a com- 
mon school to have some philosophical apparatus by which to 
explain the simple laws of nature. A microscope to examine 
insects, a telescope to look at stars, a prism to distinguish 
colors, an orrery to represent the system of the heavens, 
blackboard and chalk, slate and pencil, paper and pen, many 
other devices by which invisible thought is painted to 
the eye and thus pictured to the memory, are of untold 
advantage in the school-room. I would not have all this deli- 
cate machinery exposed to the rough and careless hands of 
the scholars whenever they choose, but let the use of the 
apparatus be the reward of studiousness. Let it be assigned 
to certain half-days. Let it be at the teacher's command to 
elucidate an unexpected difficulty, or to banish an inexplicable 
lethargy, and the school-room would soon become a more 
fascinating place to the scholar than any shops of gewgaws, 
than any circus or buffoonery, or any theatre or tragedy. 






THE DULL SCHOLAR. 



281 



II. To interest dull children, appeal to the imagination, 
that faculty which searches through heaven and earth for 
knowledge and thought; through the past and the present 
for motive and aim ; through all experiences of soul and life 
for stimulus and reward. The imagination is very likely to 
rove after forbidden objects. The mind has a natural ten- 
dency, especially in childhood, to reverie and day-dreams, and 
oftentimes it indulges in anticipations which have no basis in 
reason and can have no realization in fact. Repress these 
vain imaginations, and lead the mind of the child to sober 
thought and rational expectations, otherwise it will be an 
eccentric and unbalanced mind, no matter what gifts it may 
possess, or brilliancy of occasional accomplishment it may 
acquire. 

We live in a century of revolution, of independent 
thinking, of wild adventure. Dull children, who are not 
eager in sports, who are not rapid in study, who seem to 
have their faculties chained by inattention and listlessness, 
are sometimes greatly occupied with their own silent and 
concealed thoughts. They are brooding over plans of which 
their friends know nothing; they are adopting projects and 
resolves which will suddenly burst forth into light and into 
execution with tremendous energy. It is of the last impor- 
tance that they should obtain discipline and self-control; that 
they should see the necessity of thorough and protracted study 
to any great accomplishment ; that they should see the rela- 
tions between virtue and usefulness. Otherwise they will fol- 
low the guidance of some foolish fancy, and rush into passion 
and folly ; they will spend their strength vainly in extravagant 
schemes ; they will waste their life in reveries and dreams, in 
projects commenced but never ended, in hopes cherished but 
never fulfilled. We are surrounded by multiplied productions 
of fiction and fancy. Deep foundations are loosed; ancient 
opinions are doubted ; old establishments are weakened. 
Revolutions were never so rapid nor so abundant. Doctrines 
of religion, doctrines of morals, doctrines of politics, are to 
ten thousand minds uncertain and changeful, like the waxing 
19 



282 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

and waning moon, like the glimmer of the northern aurora, 
not like the fixed stars, not like the morning sun. There is a 
fictitious literature sweeping over the land in floods, confusing 
the minds of our youth with regard to right and wrong ; with 
regard to good and evil ; with regard to the claims of a sen- 
sual or of a spiritual life. I deem it, therefore, one of the 
most solemn obligations resting upon the parent, to guide 
aright the imagination of his child. ^Kindle the imagination 
of the apathetic child with love, and hope, and high aspira- 
tion. Let that child read the biographies of good men and 
good women ; let that child be familiar with the parables of 
Christ and with the stories of the Bible; let that child be- 
come interested in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The mind 
that is eager and restless and spiritual will build its air castles ; 
let it voyage to the Isle of France with Harriet Newell ; let it 
labor in the provinces of Burmah with Adoniram Judson ; let 
it roam through the romantic scenes of India with Reginald 
Heber ; let it journey with Christiana and her children, guarded 
by the invincible Great-heart ; let it hunt for golden gardens 
and fairy palaces of splendor with Aladdin's lamp; let it find 
some supernatural builder of boats, or huts by the sea, or wig- 
wams on the mountain, or caverns in some distant isle. Only 
let the imagination feed on pure thought, and refined sentiment, 
and heroic achievement. Let the imagination take its flights, 
only let them be pure flights ; let the inventive talent form 
its theories, only let them be founded on principles of science 
and on absolute fact; let the adventurous spirit surround itself 
with new relations and startling wonders, only let the disin- 
terested aims of love and religion guide in all those imaginary 
adventures. It cannot harm the child to dream as James 
Watt dreamed, watching the tea-kettle lid and the tea-kettle 
spout; holding first the spoon, next the shingle, next the piece 
of ice, over the nose of the kettle, in the current of steam; 
studying out the condensing force of different appliances, 
— until his grandmother rebuked him sharply, as one of the 
most idle and stupid of all boys. She had not the most distant 
glimpse of the mighty locomotive on the railroad; of the 



THE DULL SCHOLAR. 283 

swift steamship on the sea ; of the sublime energy in the mills, 
to which the boy's mind was leading. The boy himself had 
no distinct conception of the wonders to which the hand of 
God was conducting him ; still his meditative, dreamy, anxious 
thoughts, disinclining him to the plays and pleasures of the 
child, unfitting him for the superficial studies to which other 
children were devoted, leading him to plunge into the deep 
reason of things, and into the solution of difficult problems, 
was one of the direct and beneficent gifts of God. 

We have passed out of the age of stone and iron, out of the 
age of unprofitable occupations and humdrum fancies, into 
the age of cotton and of corn, of petroleum and of gold, of 
romance and achievement, of multiplied discoveries and rapid 
accumulation. We no longer go to the arctic whales for oil; 
we find it in the black anthracite, we pump it out of the 
ground. We no longer go to the Birmingham mills for cali- 
cos and carpets, nor to the Sheffield cutlers for knives ; the 
Whitney machine cleanses our cotton ; the clipping machine 
cuts our wool; the looms of improved patterns weave our 
cloths ; the corn-planter sows our seed ; the cultivator, the 
mowing-machine, the reaper, almost without the use of human 
fingers, take care of and gather in the grain. We have lands 
of inexhaustible fertility ; we have all materials for mechanic 
ingenuity ; we have all facilities for manufacturing success ; 
we have all provocation and helps for progress in invention 
and in art. The main thing needed now is to quicken and 
guide the youthful mind. 

The world is not old ; it is made new every morning and 
every night. Leaves are as symmetrical, flowers are as beau- 
tiful, valleys are as diversified, mountains are as sublime, as 
when sunshine first burst forth upon the world after the Deluge. 
We have explorers and inventors, and the high rules of scien- 
tific progress ; we have ethics, and metaphysics, and the pro- 
found principles of disinterested love ; we have pure morals 
and Christian doctrine, and the great foundations of a Chris- 
tian life. There are equivalents between the ages past and 
the ages present; there are compensations for losses and 



284 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

deficiencies in such a land as ours. If we have not the culture 
of the old Greek, in all the nicer arts ; if we have not the 
finish and the equipoise found among the titled classes of 
Europe, — we have an independence and vigor, we have a senti- 
ment of heroism and of accomplishment, we have a richness 
of youthful intellect and of ardent action ; we have an outreach- 
ing inquisitiveness of mind, searching after discoveries ; we 
have an innate self-reliance, poised on our own integrity and 
strength, — which are more than a substitute for the thousand 
years which England, and France, and Germany have lived. 
Is there not here room for aspiration and for hope ? Cultivate 
these sentiments in your children. Let Imagination uncover 
its wing, and take an eagle's flight; let Hope nourish itself 
with Christian food, and the life of your children shall not be 
in vain ; let us give a larger play to Invention an& Genius ; 
let us seek for a well-balanced and a well-disciplined imagina- 
tion ; let Thought no longer lie fettered in the chains of sloth ; 
let Discovery and Invention no longer hibernate ,in the dark 
dens of Ignorance ; let not the lack of opportunity, and the 
lack of encouragement, and the lack of religious awakening, 
keep those faculties in dormant stupidity, which might rise 
into brilliant knowledge and eminent usefulness. Berzelius, 
the great Swedish chemist, went forth from the school to the 
university with this recommendation of his teacher: "Indif- 
ferent in behavior, of doubtful hope." If he had not found a 
more appreciating professor and a higher stimulus, the cruci- 
ble would have had for him no decomposing power, to sepa- 
rate the oxygen from the hydrogen ; the blow-pipe would have 
had no illuminating energy, to show how steel and iron will 
burn. William Cowper was persecuted by the malignant 
tyranny of a wicked boy who sat by his side in school. He 
was pinched and beaten and kicked and insulted and tortured, 
until, in the early feebleness of his physical constitution, it 
seemed as if he must die. He outlived the torment, but he was 
a sufferer all his days from timidity and the nervous depression 
thus inspired. He could not face his fellow-men in any public 
duty; he could not enlarge the circle of his acquaintance 



THE DULL SCHOLAR. 285 

with any comfort or hope ; he could only whisper his prayers 
in secret, and meditate his poems in silence, and write his 
letters in deep retirement, and show, behind the veil of dis- 
tance, the beautiful soul which otherwise might have glittered 
like a star on the brow of national fame. Repress not the 
courage of the child. Awaken his hope ; kindle his imagina- 
tion ; reveal to him the inexhaustible wealth of science ; show 
to him the inimitable beauty of virtue ; inspire him with a 
determination to excel. 

III. In order to awaken and advance dull children, study 
the bent of their mind, ascertain if possible the providences 
which indicate their future destiny, and let the efforts of the 
teacher work in the same line of results with the indications 
of Nature. It is usually a vain thing to resist Nature ; it is 
always a laborious and a painful process to obliterate intel- 
lectual propensities and to impart new desires. Washington 
Irving tried very hard to make of himself a merchant ; he did 
not succeed; his tendencies were all to the belles-lettres. 
John Foster attempted to acquire a flashy, popular style of 
writing ; it was a vain effort ; his mind was cast in the mold of 
the metaphysician ; he could not get away from his deep specu- 
lations ; he could not become intelligible to the majority of his 
audience. Robert Hall was sent, when a little child, with his 
nurse, to the fields around the cemetery, to divert his mind 
from thoughtfulness and to invigorate his feeble frame ; before 
his parents or friends knew it, he had learned to read from the 
letters and sentences on the grave-stones; and when in his 
childish sports he was dividing the property with his brothers, 
his proposal was, "You take the land and the cows and the 
sheep, and I will take the books." It is neither wise nor kind 
to thwart such propensities as these, and oftentimes, under a 
timid and uninteresting demeanor, when the mind seems to be 
slumbering in stupidity, you will find these or similar pro- 
pensities, if you search for them, in strong and ineradicable 
force. I know it is sometimes said that we should seek to 
cultivate the faculties in which we are deficient, and thus 
secure a mental balance. If a child has no taste for the 



286 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

languages, put him into Greek and Latin, and make him dig at 
ancient roots from week to week and year to year. If a child 
does not love mathematics, compel him to study arithmetic 
and algebra. I am well aware that there is a system of 
elementary and disciplinary study necessary to train the 
mind up to comprehensiveness, symmetry, and strength. I 
know that all educational experiments, both in the college and 
the school, prove that if any mind has any special gift, con- 
stituting genius, still it is better for that mind to take a wide 
curriculum of study, and to secure for itself a thorough pre- 
liminary discipline. The power of the special gift will be 
all the more remarkable, because the faculties have been 
developed in due proportion, and the mind, as a whole and 
inseparable organism, has been invigorated. The history of 
scholars proves beyond a doubt that he who would excel 
in any specific line of action, whether as lawyer, physician, or 
minister, whether as painter, sculptor, or poet, whether as 
engineer, statesman, or architect, had better discipline and 
perfect his mind by a complete course of academical study. 

But the point at which I now aim is this : How shall you 
arouse the enthusiasm of the dull child? It may be that he 
has no hidden faculties nor dormant strength, and that he is 
ordained to be dull as long as he lives ; but you ought not" to 
take this for granted. The soul is formed of God to be 
educated, and to assume an unexpected and mighty power in 
the course of its education. You might as well say that the 
young bird just hatched will never fly, because it has no wings, 
as that the young child will never clearly understand and 
sublimely reason, because he seems to be involved in thought- 
less lethargy or in confused bewilderment now. It is his 
nature to think and to learn ; it is his destiny to progress and 
to reason. Development is the law of his being. It is his 
privilege to aspire after science and even genius. The parent 
does expect his child to unfold larger faculties; the teacher 
ought to expect it of every one under his charge, and to labor 
for it. The child who remains all his life-time a stupid, 
indolent ignoramus, is a monstrosity, and not a legitimate 



THE DULL SCHOLAR. 287 

specimen of human nature, or otherwise he is a most unfortu- 
nate being, hindered by circumstances, cut off from privileges, 
his intellectual impulses crushed out by vices, or checked by 
false theories, or thwarted by misguided friends. Let the 
teacher act on the firm belief that every child, if rightly 
guided, may make rapid progress in knowledge. There may 
be opposing influences in society, or in the home or in the 
habits of the child, which cannot be overcome ; but let this be 
the expectation, that the child will learn, and this the pur- 
pose, to help it to learn. 

In order to render the right aid and stimulus to the 
child, study his biases ; learn the bent of his genius ; ex- 
plore the secret springs of his intellectual desire. " My 
boy," said a discerning teacher to a lad in his school, "I 
am sorry to see you marking and disfiguring your book, but 
some of these pictures are very skilfully made; if you will 
come to me one hour every evening, I will teach you to 
draw and paint, and then I think you will find a new 
interest in your other studies." He had been a listless and 
even reckless lad, wasting all his hours ; but the kind tone and 
the opportune encouragement, striking upon the hidden im- 
pulses which God had planted in his soul, made of him a 
superior scholar and an eminent artist. 

It would have been as difficult and as cruel to prevent Lu- 
cretia Davidson, or her sister Margaret, from writing poetry, 
as to fetter the wings of the bird that it might not fly, or to 
muzzle its bill that it might not sing; and all successful efforts 
to educate such minds must follow the promptings of nature, 
rather than seek to obliterate them. 

It may be the misfortune, or it may be the sin, of the par- 
ent, that he does not understand the tendencies of his own 
child. With some it is a misfortune. They have never been 
educated themselves, and how shall they educate others ? 
They have never studied human nature, so as to know what 
qualities of character are indicated by certain symptoms ; the 
whole diagnosis of mental health or mental disease is to them 
a perfect mystery. They have not been trained in any school, 



288 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

whether of science or of practical life, to careful observation, 
or to critical analysis, or to logical thought. They do not 
understand their own consciousness ; how shall they read the 
inner soul of their children? They took upon them the re- 
sponsibilities of a family, without a glimpse of the infinite 
grandeur of the relationship they were to bear to immortal 
souls, and now they are not prepared to discern the biases, or 
the capabilities, or the wants of the child ; or if they do dis- 
cern them, they are not prepared to counsel and guide the 
child in wisdom's ways. It is their misfortune and not their 
fault. With other parents this ignorance and inability are a 
sin. They have the education necessary to comprehend their 
children's idiosyncracy, and to lead them thoughtfully and 
surely in paths of improvement. But they are apathetic ; they 
are lovers of ease ; they are absorbed in worldly cares ; they 
are unmindful of their eternal accountability; they do not 
rouse themselves to a sense of obligation and of privilege, so 
as to lead their children up to those heights of exaltation and 
usefulness where they might assuredly see them stand. It is 
on their part criminal neglect, and their children are the most 
unfortunate of all human creatures. Better to be the child of 
a heathen, and have a heathen's doom, than to be the child of 
an educated, strong-minded citizen of a Christian country, who 
carelessly or recklessly leaves his offspring to go down from 
the summits of privilege to the depths of ignorance and moral 
wreck. But the common-school teacher, making it his busi- 
ness to study the character of the young, consecrating himself 
to the work of education, ought to know what are the intel- 
lectual tendencies of the children whom he instructs, and he 
ought to avail himself of that knowledge, for the welfare of 
dull children, who are of a desponding temperament, who have 
been surrounded by adverse circumstances, who are in feeble 
health, or who, it may be, have never had the grandeur of 
their privilege or the measure of their capability set before 
them. Some of the best minds of the world, touched to the 
finest issues, are most inclined to self-distrust and to overpow- 
ering fear. Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Taylor, late of New Haven, 



THE DULL SCHOLAE. 289 

when a student in Yale College, lost his health, and fell back 
three years. He says, " When I came the last time (for I 
entered three different classes), it was rather to gratify my 
parents than with any expectation or intention of being a 
scholar. Though I had previously felt an intense interest in 
study, I had by that time entirely lost it — I had abandoned 
the thought of either doing or being much in future life." It 
was the stimulating counsels of President Dwight that kept 
him on. Even after he had studied theology and been licensed 
to preach, it was the encouraging words of Dr. Dwight that 
emboldened him to accept the call which he received to the 
New Haven church. Dr. Dwight said to him, " You do not 
know what you can do. No young man of even respectable 
talents knows what he can do, and hence, in many cases, they 
do so little. Believe me, I have no fears of the issue, and I 
know much better what you can do than you know yourself." 
"Dr. Dwight," says Dr. Taylor, "inspired me with cheerful 
courage, and I succeeded in making efforts which otherwise I 
could not have made. After a while I got over these fits of 
despondency, and no one can tell how much I owe to him 
for it." 

By similar methods of sagacity and of love, every common- 
school teacher, and every academy teacher, may search out 
some minds that need his words of sympathy, guidance, praise ; 
and his influence over that child or youth may be the means, 
under God, not only of rescuing a soul from apathy and de- 
spair, but of kindling a bright and permanent light that shall 
shine for the land and for the world. It is well for the teacher 
to remember that there are often great designs of infinite wis- 
dom hidden under the dark providences of God. The child 
of delicate and feeble frame, soon exhausted by labor, soon 
weary of study, nervous, afflicted with pains, it may be, will 
soon be called to heaven, there to cast off the shattered taber- 
nacle of flesh ; there to rise above the incumbrances and disa- 
bilities of earth ; there to investigate science with more than 
Miltonic powers. It will be a comfort to the teacher, when 
that child is laid in the grave, to know that he was careful not 



290 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

to break the already bruised reed; that he dealt charitably, 
tenderly, with the one whom God had smitten. That child of 
delicate structure may ripen into manly strength, and may 
outlive and outwork the robust and the energetic. The child 
of physical infirmity may find the outward disability only a 
source of mental quickening and of inward light. Walter 
Scott was a lame boy from his childhood up ; but he was cut 
off from the coarse sports and degrading pleasures of other 
children. He was sent to the country, to be fed on milk and 
air. His soul was nurtured by the scenery of mountains ; by 
the silence of meditation ; by the reading of history and 
poems ; by the tutorship of a thoughtful and loving woman, 
the sister of his mother, and thus it was that the cripple in 
limbs became a giant in mind. 

The child who seems now dull and impassive, hardly to be 
startled out of his lethargy by any exhibition of truth, or by 
any stimulus of motive, may be gathering force, in the myste- 
rious processes of the mind, for a future energy and accom- 
plishment that shall surprise the world. It is not always the 
precocious who do the most for the advancement of science. 
The mind of silence and inaction may suddenly develop an 
unexpected power. The rock must be struck by the rod of 
Moses, or it will not give forth its exhaustless streams. The 
gifted musician, the born painter, the natural poet, the pro- 
found philosopher, is not likely to know his power, till some 
strain of harmony, some magic picture, some thrilling appeal 
to the imagination, some powerful principle of ethical reason- 
ing, has swept across the chords of his soul, as the wind sweeps 
the ^Eolian harp. God's power must awaken the sluggish 
mind. Some opportune voice of education, or art, or religion, 
or nature, must speak to the responses of the inward soul, be- 
fore those dormant, mysterious faculties will spring into life. 
Sir Humphrey Davy was thought to be a very stupid boy, but 
the grand science of chemistry was waiting for him, and he 
for that ; and through the darkness and hopelessness of his 
childhood, could still be discerned, by the true seer, the dis- 
tant glimmer of that lamp, which should be carried safely 



THE DULL SCHOLAR. 291 

through all inflammable gases and all subterranean mines. 
Rev. Dr. Thomas Scott could not write a composition at the 
age of twelve years, and on account of his supposed stupidity 
his father chose him to do the most degrading drudgery of the 
farm; nevertheless, in that brain, under God, were hidden 
those voluminous and most instructive commentaries which 
have filled the world with religious light. From all history, 
and from all biographies, comes the admonition to the dis- 
cerning teacher, Do not harshly repel, do not thoughtlessly 
discourage, the dull and undemonstrative child. If the child 
be depressed by fear, or unmoved by thought, do not lay any 
additional burden on that soul, but supply encouragement and 
hope. Point the mind to the grandeur of intellectual attain- 
ment, and to the progressive steps by which knowledge is to 
be reached. Uncover and kindle the glowing coal, so long 
hidden in the ashes. Polish the rough diamond which you 
have found in the ore. Invoke, for your help, the grace of 
God, and you shall find that the mind, which God has 
created for improvement, has elastic force, and cannot be 
buried in torpor and secularities ; that the soul which God has 
formed for immortality and redeemed for his own alliance, 
will rise with irrepressible expansion to its lofty eminence. 



READING. 



[This address on Reading was originally prepared for delivery at the Brad- 
ford (Mass.) Female Seminary. It was subsequently given at Miss Gilman's 
School in Chester Square, Boston. It was also one of the addresses most fre- 
quently used by Dr. Foster at Teachers' Institutes. He likewise introduced it 
as one of his sermons in his course on the Family, as preached at West Spring- 
field and Lowell. In this use of the manuscript, he modified it considerably, 
entitled his discussion "Literary Culture in the Home," and chose as a text, 
1 Tim. 4:13, " Give attendance to reading." Reference to this address is made 
in the Biographical Sketch on page 119.] 

My topic is, " The True Method of Culture by Books," and 
here I have two divisions of thought, — 

I. The Classification of Books. 
II. The Advantages of Reading. 

The first question which I propose is this, What are the 
books to be read, in order to lead the mind and character up 
to the highest attainments ? A selection becomes the first of 
>all necessities. It is simply impossible to read a half or a hun- 
dredth part of the books which are published. It is the age 
of books. It is the token of the progress of mind and the 
improvement of society more than all other discoveries. The 
most important quality and distinction of this j:>eople is, it is 
a reading people. A literary aspiration, to some extent, is 
awakened in all hearts. This one distinction, more than 
others, is the foundation of our religion, our liberty, our enter- 
prise, our national strength. Within the memory of those 
now living, there were only thirty-seven newspapers in the 
United States; now there are more than twenty-five hundred. 
The press is unbound, and mind is unchained. Books are mul- 
tiplied on every subject. A few years ago, two hundred and 



READING. 293 

fifty sheets an hour was all that a printing-press, worked by 
hand, could print; now, going by steam, it casts off four thou- 
sand per hour. A few years ago a packet-ship crossed the 
ocean in a month, and in a week after its arrival, the new's 
would be distributed. Now the ocean is crossed in nine or ten 
days by steamer, in an hour by cable ; and events which hap- 
pen to-day in the British Parliament, or on the European con- 
tinent, in less than twenty-four hours will be flying on paper 
wings to all parts of the land. Once it took five years of 
laborious work of the scribe to prepare a copy of the Bible, 
and the cost of one was a fortune. Now, copies are printed, 
thousands per hour, and any man may buy one for the wages 
of two hours' work. We are universal readers, and we exercise 
the right of private judgment as universally. There is not a 
change of cabinet officers in Europe, much less in our own 
country; not a revolution of opinion; not a war declared; 
not a battle fought ; not a governor elected ; not a great ques. 
tion discussed in Congress or Legislature, but in less than a 
week it is talked over in every log-cabin of the West, in every 
cottage of New England. All this shows where the sover- 
eignty lodges, and where it ought to lodge. It shows how 
immense our responsibility for our own education ; how vast 
our privilege, if we improve it. Of course, out of the three 
thousand papers printed weekly, no one can read more than 
three or four; out of every three thousand books printed, 
most of us are not likely to read more than three or four. If 
there be any education by books, a wise, well-considered, com- 
prehensive system of reading must be adopted. Allow me to 
give a rapid sketch of certain departments of valuable reading. 
I. First of all is the Biblical and Theological. The Bible 
itself is a mine of intellectual treasures, and more ingots of 
gold have been dug from it than from all other books and 
from all human intellects. It would be incredible, and is in- 
credible to all but the accurate student, who has followed the 
thread of ecclesiastical and scholarly history, to be told how 
much the Bible has quickened the thoughts of genius, and 
proved the germ of all literature and learning. Says one of 



294 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

our greatest authors, "The Bible has proved the origin and 
first excitement of nearly all the literature and science which 
we now possess." Of course this book demands your study, 
not only for the salvation of the soul, but for intellectual force 
and accomplishment. No person can be educated who is not 
thoroughly acquainted with the Bible. Its thoughts are di- 
vine, all other thoughts are human. Study it thoroughly, and 
it will unfold in beauty, richness, and glory more and more, 
and will lift the mind above all feebleness and puerilities. 
Study it thoroughly, and it will fill the life with the refining 
influences of intellectual culture and moral elevation. I have 
included, in this department, theological treatises. Great men, 
of high and consecrated genius, have left to the world inval- 
uable legacies of Biblical literature. No other department of 
literature is producing more fresh, and instructive, and im- 
pressive works at the present hour. Sermons, essays, treatises 
of the highest order of thought, and unequalled popularity 
and power, are appearing. No books are more eagerly and 
widely read than some of these. I shall not specify particular 
authors, but I implore you to make the Biblical department 
one of your most frequent and earnest subjects of study. 

II. A second department of reading, which cannot be 
omitted, is the Historical and Biographical. The most beau- 
tiful and fascinating of all histories have been written in the 
present age. Among them, Hallam, Alison, Macaulay, Car- 
lyle, in England, and Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, Motley, in 
America, occupy the first rank. If the story of an individ- 
ual's life be important, how much more the progress and evo- 
lution of vast and complicate events on which a nation's 
existence and prosperity depend ! Here may you learn what 
man is, in all his diverse aspects of genius and imbecility, of 
knowledge and ignorance, of nobleness and crime. Here will 
you see the most striking exhibitions of magnanimity and 
virtue, with their results of joy, and also of vice and degra- 
dation, with their consequents of woe. Here may you learn 
what constitutes political greatness, what dishonors a land, 
what overthrows a nation's hopes. Here, above all, may you 



READING. 295 

see the footsteps of the mighty God, now pursuing His coun- 
sels in paths of light, and now in paths of mystery ; now lift- 
ing up the humble and the obedient, bringing unexpected re- 
sults out of insignificant causes ; now inflicting His necessary 
judgments, and, by the defeat of His foes, advancing His own 
great designs. God's plans have been moving on through all 
changes, with slow, yet sure and majestic force, to the accom- 
plishment of His great purposes. In the vivid exhibition of 
Church History, two foreign authors, D' Aubigne and Neander, 
stand prominent. And none can read such books intelligently, 
without an enlargement of knowledge and piety both ; with- 
out new inducements to trust in God, and to commit all inter- 
ests into His hands. 

It is wonderful to notice how the mind becomes interested 
and absorbed in those old histories of two hundred and three 
hundred years ago, which might seem to have passed into 
the catalogue of obsolete events, and into the limbo of forget- 
fulness, as much as the bones and fossils of the old primitive 
formation. And yet it is not so. These annals are as full of 
life and freshness, as full of instruction, as full of power, as 
though they had been written but yesterday. Take the his- 
tory of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
when the whole wide world was roused out of its sleep by the 
discovery of America ; by the colonization of a new world ; 
by the reconstruction of opinions and the reconstruction of 
empires. It was not the age of the present popular advance- 
ment. But it was the age of adventure, of speculation, of 
enthusiasm, of resolve, of brilliant, chivalrous exploit. Dis- 
tinctions of rank were everywhere maintained with a reverence 
unknown to this century. No republicanism was allowed to 
profane the j)resence of aristocratic privilege and power. No 
commerce, nor inventions, nor mechanical ingenuities, nor even 
the onward, majestic steppings of science, were permitted to 
hold an equal career with prerogative, and precedent, and he- 
reditary rank. Yet with all this reluctance to move, and with 
all this reverence for the past, sometimes obstinate, sometimes 



296 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

foolish, sometimes insane, there were great reforms. The 
minds of men were inquiring after a purer religion, a deeper 
philosophy, a higher republicanism, and better institutions. 
The art of printing came in. The revival of learning fol- 
lowed. The Lutheran reformation was born. The Papal tyr- 
anny was broken down. The Tudor dynasty was established 
in England. Opinion became more free. A system of popu- 
lar instruction was adopted. The Bible was read by the com- 
mon people. Popular rights were guaranteed by jury trial, 
by habeas corpus, by petition of right, by international con- 
federacy. Changes took place which have made England the 
crown of the world's empires, and the gem of old ocean's isles. 
Genius was roused out of its centurial slumbers. Freedom 
broke away from its clanking chains. Civilizations, laws, lit- 
eratures, sciences, philosophies, had their birth. Then was 
the commencing movement of that march of mind, which has 
brought in such remarkable discoveries, and inventions, and 
energy of enterprise. It is a study of profound and unfailing 
interest, to mark the progress of such an age. 

As to Biography, I cannot begin to enumerate the volumes 
of value ; I cannot begin to describe the varied instruction 
and power that belong to this species of literature. Take the 
memoirs of one divine, Payson ; of one poet, Cowper ; of one 
teacher, Arnold ; of one statesman, Wilberforce ; of one mis- 
sionary, Ann Haseltine Judson. Examine some of the older 
lives, like Wycliffe, the Lutherworth rector ; or John Knox, 
of Scotland ; or Luther, of Germany ; or tjalvin, of France ; 
or Milton, Hampden, Cromwell, of England ; — if any one can 
read them without elations and depressions, heart- throbbings 
and high aspirations, he must have a very stupid or a very 
stoical mind. 

III. A third important department of reading is the Poetical. 
Poetry and allegory and criticism have enlisted a vast amount 
of genius, and in them have "been poured forth imagination 
and pathos, humor and wit, information and eloquence without 
stint. I can only mention a few names, without going into 



READING. 297 

particular characteristics. From Spenser, and Shakespeare, and 
Milton, the older giants of poetry, to Bryant, and Longfellow, 
and Whittier, and Lowell, and Tennyson, the last and best of 
the moderns ; from Bacon, and Addison, and Johnson, the 
older essayists, to Macaulay, and Isaac Taylor, and Rogers, 
and Bayne, of the moderns, — the range of subjects is vast, and 
the exhibition of talent is great. These writings appeal to the 
sense of beauty in art, and the sense of sublimity in thought. 
They awaken the love of the tender, of the pathetic, of the 
heroic. They exalt all the faculties of the intellect; they 
touch and subdue the sensibility of the heart. As a recreation 
in our hours of weariness ; as a comfort under the depressing 
weight of grief; as a stimulus to the jaded soul, when the 
wings of the spirit droop ; as a joy and hope when inferior 
pleasures fail, — they are wonderfully efficacious. 

I have referred to Shakespeare. I doubt whether he is read 
now as much as he was by Lyman Beecher, and Francis Way- 
land, and Daniel Webster, and Rufus Choate, and some of 
those old giants of divinity and of law. With tendencies to 
vulgarity, which he borrowed of his age, and which are the 
one dark spot on this sun-like disk, he has profound concep- 
tions of truth ; he has the most accurate views of life and 
character and history ; he has most touching exhibitions of 
diverse forms of virtue. His deep insight into human nature 
is unsurpassed. His delineations of home life, and of social 
life, of love and friendship, of tenderness, pity, scorn, fear, 
craziness, genius, humor, hate, are unapproachable. His ex- 
hibition of courtly and chivalrous and popular manners, is 
the best history of the times. He gives the truest unfolding 
of political chicanery, and of noble statesmanship. He gives 
the most accurate photographs of the motives of the heart, 
so often misunderstood, so often sedulously concealed. His 
pictures of woman are of remarkable delicacy and power. 
There are the ladies of the land, fair and witty and cultured, 
heroic in suffering and energetic in action, quick in sympa- 
thy and abiding in faith, with hearts tender and pitiful and 
charitable; with great social and even political influence; as 
20 



298 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

you might suppose of dramas written during the reign of 
Elizabeth, the most illustrious, the most powerful, the most 
independent of all the queens of history. 

I do not include novels in the list of the miscellanies which 
I would recommend, for they contain a vast amount of unprof- 
itable reading. They should be read by small selections, 
and chosen with singular wisdom and sagacity, and the taste 
for them should be rather repressed than encouraged. For 
the mind that is given up to them becomes enervated, and 
loses all relish for the substantial and the pure in literature 
and thought. Its energies are wasted in dreams, if not dis- 
honored by false ideas of happiness and duty. 

I might include, in the designation of the miscellaneous, 
newspapers. I value them more highly than some who have 
discoursed about them, and who have derived a good deal of 
aid from them. You need books of more profound thought and 
more protracted argument ; you need books in which systems 
are unfolded and principles are defended, and in which the 
phenomena of nature and of life are traced backward to their 
causes and forward to their results. Newspapers are neces- 
sarily more fragmentary and incoherent. They bring before 
you facts and separate ideas, which true thinkers must build 
into form and into harmony. They throw at your feet rough 
stones from the quarry, to be fashioned by the polisher's hand, 
— blocks of marble, without apparent relation, to be built by 
the true architect into the symmetrical edifice. I think very 
highly of the newspaper as a means of education. In almost 
every paper that you take into your hands (unless it be given 
up wholly to the frivolous literature of the day), you will find 
some significant fact, which is to be inscribed on the page of 
permanent history ; some gem of thought, worthy to be fixed 
in your memory, and to be set in that enduring circlet of 
truths, which you are weaving for your eternal joy. I think 
Fisher Ames' estimate of the newspaper was too low. He 
said, "It is calculated to throw the general mind into a fer- 
ment, and into confusion of thought, and a false excitement of 
feeling." Better an awakened and even agitated state of pub- 



READING. 299 

lie sentiment, than dull stagnation. It is the power of the 
newspaper that it is interesting. It deals with the facts of the 
hour, with the life of the nation, with all those opinions, dis- 
coveries, experiences, which constitute the failure or the prog- 
ress of society and of institutions ; with all those startling 
and thrilling events, which set men to thinking of the deep 
problems of duty and destiny, o£. philosophy and theology. 

I would include in this miscellaneous department, as even 
more important than the newspaper, the literary and religious 
Reviews, where the strongest thinkers of the times discuss the 
most pungent questions of the hour. Some of these collected 
essays, like those of Macaulay, Jeffrey, John Wilson, Talfourd, 
in England ; like those of Whipple, Barnes, Bethune, White, 
Fisher, Hodge, in our own country, are invaluable. It is said 
that the late Vice-president Henry Wilson read the whole North 
American Review, from the beginning, — a vast and profound 
study, a comprehensive science. And this, more than any other 
education of science or of law, probably, fitted him for his high 
station. There are other Reviews, more distinctly religious, 
like the New Englander, of New Haven ; like the JBibliotheca 
Sacra, of Andover ; like Presbyterian, and Baptist, and Metho- 
dist Reviews, which I could name, which lift the mind up 
instantly out of the region of frivolity and triviality and feeble- 
ness, into the broad light and vivifying air of scholarly and 
sacred discussions; where weak intellects soon breathe more 
vigorously, and where strong intellects find their native food. 
Here intellect is untrammeled as the wind. 

Truth and error have at last found an open field, and in all 
controversies truth asks no odds. She stands or falls by the 
strength of her principles and by the power of her blows. 
We should suppose that in the multitude of books, a large 
number would fall still-born from the press, and lie unread in 
libraries. But this does not seem to be the fact. The mind 
of man has an insatiable curiosity. Like Adam and Eve in 
the garden, he hungers for evil as well as for good. And like 
Adam and Eve in the garden, many of our youth, and even 
many of our adults, are likely to listen to the voice of the be- 



300 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

guiling serpent, careless whether it be error or truth, if so be 
it gratify their insatiate desire. There are thousands who are 
willing to feed upon trash, upon the froth and the foam of a frivo- 
lous imagination, the mere whipped syllabub of literature, rather 
than upon the solid food of divine argument, and of scientific, 
historic instruction, and of pure and elevating thought. O, 
that our youth might und-erstand that books are sometimes 
dangerous; — wicked books, as much as wicked companions; 
pestilential books, as much as raging cholera; intoxicating 
books, filled with the atmosphere of false pleasure and false 
thought, as much as the drunkard's drink, or the suffocating 
gas of the mines. Let them turn away with loathing from 
all those books which defend false sentiments, which inspire 
bad passions, which beguile the imagination into exaggerated 
views of life. Let parents be on their guard, and faithfully 
instruct their children, and persuasively influence them, lead- 
ing them away from bad books. Let all those who have prop- 
erty to build up a library, and culture to understand its value, 
and power of social influence to caution other minds, beware 
what books they admit into schools and libraries, and espe- 
cially into the sacred precincts of the family. As well might 
you bring ratsbane or strychnine into your house, and take off 
the label of "Poison," and set it up among your bottles of spices 
and cordials, as to bring these corrupting volumes into your 
Sabbath-schools, and your colleges, and your academic semi- 
naries. Beware lest your youth be betrayed before you know 
the cause, and when it is too late to remedy the evil, into the 
indulgence of vanity and self-will; into wild and reckless 
views of life ; into the love of pleasure, instead of the love of 
self-denial; into extravagant vagaries, which only dissipate 
and enfeeble the mind, instead of that concentrated thought 
which is the true discipline and the true power. 

Better for us to live, as the early Christians lived, in the 
dens and caves of the earth ; better to be driven, as the non- 
conformists and the covenanters were driven, to. the fastnesses 
of the mountains and the recesses of the wilderness, there 
in solitude and silence, without books and friends, to commune 



READING. 301 

with God, — than to be surrounded by all the light of modern 
instruction, and still to feed the mind on flashy books, which 
only corrupt the taste and defile the heart. Do not spend 
your time over books which unfit the soul for deep thinking 
and for serious duty. Turn rather to the department of ethics 
and of mental philosophy. It is a region of thought that re- 
quires great power of abstraction, great fixedness of attention, 
great concentration of mind. It is eminently instructive, and 
is a mighty discipline to the higher faculties, if you can fol- 
low the reasoning. It is intensely attractive, when once you 
comprehend its grandeur. It shows you the laws of belief, 
the nature of argument, the limits of knowledge. It places 
before the mind profound and momentous moral questions, 
and helps to solve them. It is connected directly with many 
of the more perplexing, difficult, mysterious problems of the- 
ology. According to the spirit of faith or of skepticism in 
which you study, it will lead to the dawn of heavenly light, 
or to deep, Cimmerian darkness. Locke, Stewart, Hamilton, 
Chalmers, in England ; Edwards, Upham, Wayland, McCosh, 
Day, Porter, Haven, Hopkins, in America, — are amongst the 
greatest names in this ethical department. William Wirt, in 
one of his letters, says that "the young student of law, if he 
is overwhelmed with confusion and self-distrust, had better 
turn from his blind precedents, and his obscure principles of 
jurisprudence, to a chapter of Locke on the Understanding." 
If he has true strength, it will clear his brain, like the sea 
breeze or the mountain air to the weary invalid ; if he cannot 
read it and enjoy it, "he may hang up his whistle" (to use 
Mr. Wirt's own words) ; he is not fit to be a lawyer. 

There are gathered in the various libraries of Boston, and 
within twenty miles of that centre, more than a million of 
books, most of them open, without cost, to all the inhabitants. 
It is a bright, shining honor to this part of New England. So 
long as these books are our prized inheritance ; so long as the 
truths there contained are studied with earnestness and de- 
light ; — so long our farms may be rocky and sterile, but they 
will raise men ; so long our winters may be cold and severe, 



302 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

but through the long evening, and around the happy fireside, 
parents and children will meet to read and converse, and there 
souls will blossom out into richness and strength, more rap- 
idly and more beautifully than any tropical flowers or tropical 
fruits. 

I have not gone very largely into the designation of partic- 
ular books which are worthy of our study, for time does not 
permit. At the same time, it cannot fail to be a matter of in- 
terest to know what books have specially quickened some very 
remarkable minds. The first book which Henry Ward Beecher 
ever bought was the Works of Edmund Burke. Possibly it 
led him a little too much into the political line of preaching. 
But of this we may be sure : if it gave him his views of po- 
litical economy ; if it awakened his rich and exuberant imag- 
ination ; if it imparted to him his wonderful command of lan- 
guage and boundless fertility of thought, — he did not go very 
much amiss in his choice. Franklin, the Boston apprentice, 
learned his pure, transparent, condensed style from Addison's 
Spectator. The immortal young surveyor of Virginia, bred in 
the family of Lord Fairfax, acquired his clear-headed processes 
of reasoning from the same source. John C. Calhoun read 
the works of Isaac Barrow, and gained a transcendent power 
of abstract argument from those most logical and demonstra- 
tive sermons. William Wirt was perfectly familiar with the 
metaphysics of John Locke. Sir William Hamilton, the great 
metaphysician of Scotland, was completely fascinated by the 
sermons of Thomas Guthrie, the most profusely and beauti- 
fully illustrated of any sermons of the present century. 
When asked for the cause of his somewhat singular prefer- 
ence, he replied, that "the Imagination, in its higher action, 
is the most completely, logical and conclusive of all the 
faculties." Ralph Waldo Emerson says, that the last secular 
book of the world that he would part with is Shakspeare. 
John Harvard, the founder of Cambridge College, brought 
with him, stored in his deep memory as well as in his rich 
library, Lord Bacon's Essays, a book of which the British 
Quarterly says : " Of all the productions, it contains the most 



READING. 303 

matter in the fewest words." There is but one book of the 
world, and that is the Bible. After the Bible, the book which 
has awakened more minds than any other out of stupidity into 
intellectual earnestness, and out of impenitence into religious 
love, is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 

II The Advantages of Reading. 

1. This love of Reading counteracts the influence of 
mechanical agencies. Much of the intellectual activity of the 
times runs in the line of mechanical forces, and of merely 
utilitarian sciences. Powers of immense accomplishment are 
adjusted with great skill. Our first thought, as we enter the 
manufactory, and gaze on its complex and gigantic machinery, 
on the ingenuity of its arrangement, and on its rapid and 
accurate and diverse achievements, is, How wonderful is the 
grandeur of mind which can subdue and subordinate all these 
powers ! Our second, how admirable is the sovereignty, how 
stupendous the power of God! Our third, how great the 
danger that man will become a mere unthinking, mechani- 
cal worker! A thousand fingers soon learn to follow the 
machine. Its laws and workings are uniform ; there is little 
chance for human skill; and thus the labor becomes monot- 
onous drudgery. The freedom of the will, guiding the work, 
does not appear, as in many other employments. The exer- 
cise of thought and the diversity of product, according to 
that thought, the play of genius, and the rewards of study, 
are all lost. There is danger that the operative in the 
mills will become a mere automaton, under the despotism of 
mechanical powers. There is genius in the discoverer, who 
subdues Nature's laws ; genius in the architect, who constructs 
this machinery ; genius in the chief superintendent, who over- 
sees and keeps in play all the wheels and spindles. But in the 
laborers, who occupy a subordinate position, there is less 
chance for original thought, and sometimes the least possible 
opportunity for the exercise of their own ingenuity. There 
is* an urgent necessity, therefore, for the use of means which 
shall awaken their sluggish minds, and bring in thought and 



304 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

knowledge to elevate their toil. Let not these laborers be- 
come the mere adjunct of machinery ; let their minds be 
quickened and exalted by reading and by thought ; let them 
improve their leisure hours in acquiring information, — and then 
let their working hours be dignified and sanctified by high, 
improving meditation. 

We extol the improvements of the age. We look on with 
admiring wonder as an operator, in a little room, with a 
modest click, sends messages a thousand miles ; as the engi- 
neer of a railroad train, by turning a lever, or opening and 
shutting a valve, outspeeds the wind; as the superintendent 
of the mill lifts his gate, and sets in motion agencies which 
will spin and weave, in a given time, more than a million of 
fingers could accomplish. This is a sovereignty over nature 
which arrests the reason, and deeply impresses the imagina- 
tion. But after all, free-will is higher than the force of the 
lever and the screw ; intelligent thought is greater than steam 
or electricity ; holy emotion is better than all the results of 
science and machinery. Let not individuality of mind be 
swallowed up in the supremacy of the mechanical powers ; 
let not the workman, who has, or who may have, independent 
thought, information, discernment, logic, skill, degenerate from 
a reasoning soul to a mere manipulator ; let him not become 
the simple servitor of wheels and shafts and pulleys, and thus 
an unreasoning slave of machinery. Cultivate the brain, as 
well as the fingers, and grow in greatness of soul, as well as in 
agility of handicraft. Mechanism ought to expedite toil, and 
relieve labor, and give leisure for study ; let not its practical 
influence be directly the reverse. It is difficult to lift the soul 
above all cramping, outward influences, yet let the effort be 
made. Let books enter the battle with machines, and coun- 
terwork the tendency to sluggishness of thought, to effeminacy 
of will, to the surrender of an independent, earnest mind. 
Inspire in the mind a thirst for knowledge ; cultivate the 
habit of reflection ; increase the power of originating ideas, 
and thus shall the mind dominate over machinery, and not be 
subjugated by it, 



READING. 305 

2. The reading of instructive books is one of the most 
exhilarating and efficient methods of mental cidture to which 
we can resort. Books are not the only means of mental 
advancement; books are valuable only as a transcript of 
nature and of the soul, a picture-gallery of mighty thoughts 
and mighty deeds. The beauties of nature are everywhere to 
be seen, and if you have an open eye and an appreciative heart, 
you can read the handwriting of God without books. The 
soul of man is before you also, with no interpreter between ; 
and often in this world of eager action, and of wondrous diver- 
sity of character, you can read, directly from the life, deeper 
tragedies than any published volume contains, and attractive 
exhibitions of fortitude, virtue, nobleness, which can be only 
faintly portrayed when the pen attempts to describe them. 
What we mainly need, in order to the highest culture, is a 
perceptive, reflective soul. Far more depends on this than 
on the number of the books you read. You need a discerning 
mind and an appreciative heart, to receive the lessons of ex- 
perience and of science learned by other souls. Language is 
a medium by which thought flows from mind to mind ; books 
are interpreters between one soul and another. Of course the 
soul itself is higher than either language or books, for it creates 
thought ; it assimilates truth ; it appropriates it to inward 
wants ; it incorporates truth with the mind, as the digestive 
organs incorporate food with the body. 

There are certain omnivorous readers, but their thoughts 
are not concentrated nor self -controlled. To them books are 
liable to become a recreation, and not a toil; an easy occupa- 
tion to while away the hours, not a laborious process of think- 
ing, to increase discipline and knowledge. Better for such 
individuals to be shut up, as Bunyan was, without a book, if 
the inventive brain could only thus be set to dreaming; as 
Milton, in blindness, dreamed his Epic : as Cowper, in seques- 
tered despondency, dreamed his "Task"; as Hugh Miller, 
in the Highland bothy, dreamed his geologic science ; as 
Bunyan, in Bedford jail, dreamed his Pilgrim's heavenward 
Progress. Better for such busy, versatile, butterfly minds, 



306 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

buzzing from flower to flower, to sip a bit of honey, never to 
lay up a winter's store, to be isolated, as was Kossuth, in prison, 
with only a Bible, a dictionary, and a Shakespeare, till, with 
that scanty tuition, he became one of the most fluent and 
eloquent of English orators. 

Yet let me not depreciate books. We need the influence of 
other minds, acting upon our own, especially of minds superior 
to our own. What a joy to us if we could enter the parlor 
where Washington and Hamilton discussed questions of state ; 
where Luther and Melanchthon talked of doctrine ; where 
Milton and his daughters communed of primeval innocence 
and angelic powers! 

We sometimes shrink, perhaps, from the presence of the 
learned and illustrious, overpowered by reverence, and by 
an uncontrollable timidity. We cannot sustain our part in 
such intercourse. What a privilege to hear them, if we were 
only not responsible for a portion of the conversation. Just 
this privilege is given to us, when we take up standard books. 
We sit and hear the authors, and do not share in the talk. 
We sit by the side of the gifted and the instructed of the 
race, in their happiest moods, listening to their divinest 
thoughts and their selectest words. Many of those thoughts 
and words of great poets, historians, essayists, orators, were 
first struck out by the contact of minds in social converse. 
"As iron sharpeneth iron, so the face of a man his friend." 
When the Waverley novels were coming out anonymously, 
and all England was ringing with inquiries for the Great Un- 
known, J. B. Morritt wrote to his intimate friend, Walter 
Scott: "Ah, sir, I understand very well who is the author of 
these books. Such and such expressions, this and that, and the 
other view of character, I have heard quite too often around 
a certain happy fireside; you cannot hide your hand from 
me." 

I repeat, then, when you read valuable books, you are talk- 
ing familiarly with the greatest minds of earth. You go back 
and sit in Abraham's tent door, and hear the patriarch and 
the angel of God, You are leaning on the bosom of John, as 



READING. 307 

he talks of Jesus. You are listening, with eager multitudes, 
to Eobert Hall, the silver-tongued orator, the highest master 
of style ; or to Chalmers, the pungent expounder of doctrines 
and of hearts. You are in the " Literary Club," with Johnson, 
and Burke, and Reynolds, and Garrick, and Beauclerk, and 
Goldsmith. You are enjoying those ambrosial nights with 
Christopher North and his compeers. You hear the conversa- 
tion between Lady Jane Grey and Roger Ascham, her tutor ; 
between Ann Cooke and Francis Bacon, her son ; between 
Lady Russell and Lord William Russell, her husband ; and 
you drink in those divine consolations and inspiring doctrines 
which made those martyrs so heroic, and all those souls so 
great. You are by the winding Ouse, and a playful, timid, 
acute, tender-hearted thinker is by your side. You are sitting 
under the Northampton elms, with Edwards, or by the sound- 
ing sea and the Plymouth grave-yard, with Webster. You talk 
of things both deep and high, both mournful and cheerful. 
Your soul is imbued with a spirit of power, and your whole 
nature is refreshed and exalted. 

There is now a very strong temptation to waste time in un- 
profitable reading. Books fall from the press "thick as the 
autumnal leaves of Vallambrosa." The censorship of life 
and manners and morals, once belonging to the patriarchal 
family, then taken up by the civil law, then passing into the 
hands of the pulpit, then exercised by the school-master, is 
now vigorously used by the press. More constant in its in- 
spection, more wide in its legislation, than either family or 
school or pulpit or law, it is equally inflexible in its mandates, 
it is even more stern in its penalties. Where the family left the 
individual at the age of twenty-one, and the school often ear- 
lier ; where the civil law surrendered its rule at the portals of 
hidden thought and inward motive; where the pulpit finds no 
access to the mind, because that mind is filled with absorbing 
care and blinded by unbelief — there the voices of the press 
enter, by day and by night, in solitude and in society, in the 
private circle and in the general assembly, by most powerful 
influence to those who have literary cultivation, by constant 



308 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR, E. B. FOSTER, 

influence upon all, for there are none in our American society 
who do not read. It sways general opinion ; it gives and 
withholds reputations ; it opens and it shuts the door of 
office ; it facilitates the progress to wealth ; it is the friend of 
discoveries and enterprise ; it quickens the general thought, 
and becomes an invincible ally of truth ; it is capable of mis- 
leading thought and propagating error, swiftly and widely, as 
the pestilence breathes contagion ; it opens ten thousand ave- 
nues of pleasure, and is in fact the most fertile source of 
amusement which the populace can know. Where it lays its 
reproving and avenging hand upon wrong, its lash is like the 
whip of scorpions, and no hoary tyranny, no injurious custom, 
no inveterate prejudice, can live before its indignation. Im- 
measurable is the power of the press, and infinite is the respon- 
sibility of those who sit at the fountain of opinion, and lay 
their molding hand on the character of this thinking age. 
The responsibility is also great, and I may say immeasurable, 
of those who can use this vehicle of knowledge for their own 
entertainment and instruction, for the discipline of the family, 
for the increase of moral power. 

3. This love of reading, also, adds a new charm and delight 
to all the recreations of the home. When .the father is weary 
with business and out-door work, and the mother with domes- 
tic cares, and the children with severe school studies, there 
is no pleasure so great as that which is found in the reading 
of books, and in the conversation to which it leads. The 
eager mind thirsts for it ; the warm heart rejoices in it. Let 
books be read to gather up important facts, and to get new 
light on great principles ; let newspapers be read to secure 
the intelligence of the times. Then, in hours of rest, around 
the table and fireside, let parents and children, brothers and 
sisters, friends with friends, talk these matters over ; exercise 
their own reason ; call out each others' originality of thought 
and sagacity of reflection. It will be a mental discipline, equal 
to a recitation or a lecture; it will be a joy far beyond the 
recreation of the theatre or the revel. It is a most unfortu- 
nate family, if native quickness of mind and acquired fertility 



READING. 309 

of thought are possessed by its members, and yet no social 
conversation, no pleasant books, no sound of sweet, sing- 
ing voices, give joy to its meetings. How can they forego 
the interchange of congratulations and meditations with one 
another? How can they afford to lose those intellectual quick- 
enings, and that genial, generous heart-warmth which the love 
of reading produces? Let home be a garden watched over 
with love, cultivated with care, where all the flowers of thought 
shall blossom, and all the fruits of kindness shall ripen. 

This love of reading multiplies sources of esteem and sym- 
pathy. Love that is not built on intellectual and moral excel- 
lence is likely to grow cold and to vanish away. Identity of 
interest cannot bind, if there be no sympathy of heart. Close- 
ness of relationship, frequency of talk, cannot remove indiffer- 
ence, if the roots of indifference are in the soul. Beauty is 
fading and evanescent, and is never a sufficient foundation for 
a life-long record. The memories of old scenes, of generous 
and faithful friendship, must be cherished by new tokens of 
intelligence and goodness, or memories are vain. Keep the 
mind burnished and bright ; keep the thoughts busy with 
new truth, and old truth freshly communicated ; then shall 
father, mother, brother, sister, friend, bind the links of affec- 
tion with seven-fold force ; brighten the memories of the past 
into the colors of a golden sunset, more rich even than the 
dawn ; make the present a very festival of joy ; and be able 
to look, through the gates of the future, into a higher heaven 
of endless association, concord, and bliss. 

It is of untold importance that our children and youth 
should be bound by ties of pleasant association and dear de- 
light to home. There is a wide complaint, in our day, of the 
weakening, and sometimes the entire disruption, of home affin- 
ities. Parents mourn over truancy in the family ; children 
are inclined to be absent from home evenings. An adventu- 
rous spirit leads them away from the place of their birth, to 
seek their fortune. In the forest, in the mines, on the sea, on 
the land, in some distant city, in some lonely, painful, danger- 



310 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

ous enterprise, they pursue after novelty, pleasure, and wealth, 
and find, it may be, agony and death. 

What is the remedy ? First, let us not magnify the impor- 
tance of wealth, hastily acquired, and by uncertain methods. 
Secondly, let our youth better understand what true pleasure 
is. It is a thing of the heart and the intellect, not of sense, 
nor of novelty of scene, nor of wild, adventurous project. It 
is spiritual, and not earthly. He who can find in books, and 
in the society of friends, new thoughts, whenever he comes 
home to rest, new forms of moral loveliness, and intellectual 
beauty whenever he steps across his threshold, has found a 
prize beyond the pearls of the sea, beyond the adventures of 
the traveller in tropical climes, or of the conqueror on battle- 
fields. Let our children have this fascination of a cultivated 
and developed thought, and they will not be eager to frequent 
the street, seeking after the low, vain, profitless pleasures of 
an hour. 

Finally. This love of reading prepares for the anticipated 
leisure of retirement and age. The man of business, and the 
wife who stands by his side, a true helpmeet, are both ready 
to say, " We will not always be chained to this oar. Let us 
acquire a competence for the support of age. Let us lay up 
in store for the education and for the privileges of our chil- 
dren. Let us carry through present plans and public respon- 
sibilities, and then seek some sequestered spot, where, witli 
books and friends, with nature and God, in meditation and 
conversation and prayer, we will pass through our last years 
serenely and joyfully." But such a close of life as this needs 
an apprenticeship, as much as the most weighty and solemn 
duties. No man of business, no woman of care, without fixed 
habits of reading, and of frequent interchange of thought, can 
enjoy such a close of life. Mipd, heart, taste, hope, have all 
been engrossed with daily cares and business toils, and now 
they have no relish nor preparation for literary pursuits or 
religious enjoyment. Old age has come ; debility weakens 
the strength ; nervous impatience and irritability trouble the 



READING. 311 

mind ; and the unhappy individual sinks into a state of inac- 
tivity and hopeless disquiet. This blessed leisure has often 
been found the most intolerable burden of the life. 

What is the remedy for all this failure of hopes? There is 
none, but wisely to provide beforehand, in the youth, and in 
the early years of action and of study. Be thoughtful, and 
cherish a love of reading, all your days ; be affable and con- 
versible, your life long. Open your heart to your friends, 
and let them open their hearts to you. Prepare yourselves 
for intelligent society. Keep up the literary culture of the 
family. Be familiar with the current news of the day, and 
the important intelligence of the times. Do not live without 
books. And when you have brought the book to your cham- 
ber or your home, crack the nut and eat the meat, carefully 
meditate upon the truth, for it requires patient thought and 
resolute application to get knowledge, in age as in youth. 
Bring out the intellectual and the spiritual part of your na- 
ture. Then, when you retire, pressed by the infirmities of 
years, and the exhaustion of long-continued toil, you will have 
a fund of thought and of enjoyment to fall back upon, an 
investment laid up in the soul, youthful, beautiful, imperish- 
able as the soul itself. 

I know of no combination of attainments more attractive 
than those which are found in a thoughtful and a saint-like 
old age. The tree, hoary and ready to decay, has lost its 
green verdure, its fragrant blossoms, its symmetry of trunk 
and branch ; it will soon fall and perish. The rock, turned up 
from its primary formation, is eagerly looked at as a fossil, 
but is of value only on account of its antiquity; it has not 
the glitter of the gold, nor the ring of the silver, nor the 
utility of the iron, just heated and glowing from the forge, 
just stamped and coined in the mint. But these are forms of 
dead matter, and subject to the laws of matter, which is des- 
tined to grow old and decay. The soul is forever fresh and 
young. Knowledge and love are independent of time and 
change. The man of business, who has retired from his cares ; 
the woman of piety, whose faith has grown victorious and 



312 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

strong with stern conflicts and multiplied sorrows, — may still 
feel that their last days are their best days, and that the radi- 
ance of their close is the radiance of a golden sunset. They 
have passed to that point when passions no longer rage, and 
when temptations have lost their force. Their children and 
children's children are around them with blessings and thanks- 
givings, and their own life is full of exalted hopes and plans of 
energy and accomplishment. Experience has given them wis- 
dom; and wisdom has given them holy trust, and courage, 
and hope, and equanimity, and prayer. The memories of 
their childhood are before them, like the rainbow which spans 
a distant cloud. The hopes of heaven are before them, like 
the Star of the East, which burst upon the eyes of the longing 
Magi. Lyman Beecher, after he reached the age of eighty, 
said, "Give me back my youth, put me once more in the min- 
istry, and let me live over again this blessed life." Thousands 
of aged saints have testified that their old age was the hap- 
piest period of their experience. It may be so, it will be so, 
to every one of you whom God permits to live, if your youth 
is established in virtue ; if your great end of living is a high 
and spiritual aim; if your mind has been disciplined with 
books and thought ; if you have earnestly sought in the great 
responsibilities, the great sorrows, the great joys of the family 
life, to prepare the beloved of your household for duty, and to 
prepare yourselves for heaven. 



TEMPERANCE. 



[Any collection of writings which makes the least attempt to set forth Dr. 
Foster's lines of thought, would be imperfect which did not give some specimen 
of his discussions on Temperance. It has been thought best, however, instead of 
reproducing any single sermon on the theme, every one of which was necessarily 
full of allusions to local and temporary phases of the question, to cull from dif- 
ferent sermons representative paragraphs on topics of permanent and universal 
interest.] 

MODERATE DRINKING. 

My entreaty is to moderate drinkers. Give us, we beseech 
you, the force of your example in favor of teetotalism. You 
are in danger. Upon that danger I will not dwell. It is a 
subtle and deluding temptation, of whose true features you 
are not aware. It is a warmth in the blood, which in your 
bounding life you think the sign of vitality. It is a flush on 
the cheek, which the consumptive thinks the token of health. 
It is the soft and lulling influence which is in the air of the 
pestilential marsh, inducing the gentle slumber which fore- 
tokens death. It is the mirage of the Desert of Sahara, which 
cheats the eye with the semblance of a cool, refreshing stream. 
It is the gold and the purple of a tropical sunset, beautiful and 
attractive, but foretokening a tempest. I beseech you, be 
warned of your own danger. But this is not the highest 
motive. 

Abstain, for the sake of those whom you love. You are the 
creator and the helper of social fashions. You are drawing 
into convivial scenes those whose convictions of duty are less 
clear, whose appetites are more tyrannous, whose force of 
will is less firm than your own. If you are out of the whirl 
21 



314 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

and out of the clanger of fierce and engulfing vortices, created 
by intoxicating drinks, they are not. They are on the rim of 
the whirlpool, and will be swallowed up, if you do not draw 
them out into calm, unruffled waters. They will go out from 
your circles of exhilaration, where they had expected to find 
wit, friendship, philosophy, mental enlargement, high thinking, 
into other circles, where they will find, not wit, but the paral- 
ysis of brain ; not the flow of reason, but the chaos of thought ; 
not friendship, but bickerings and jealousies and hatreds ; not 
philosophy, but incompetency of reasoning ; not love nor con- 
science, but a callous heart and the utter confusion of moral 
sense. They will go out from your influence, the influence of 
moderate drinking, not to find true pleasure, but wild, 
maniacal excitement, the unhinging of the judgment, the 
beginning of insanity, the laughter of the fool. Their final 
departure will be, not to a pure home, nor a pure church, but 
to the drunkard's debauch, to the embraces of the harlot, to 
the blasphemies of the infidel. I beseech you, give no approval 
nor help to practices which lead to such an end. 

This custom of moderate drinking finds its true support and 
its abiding strength in the higher classes of society, and there 
the reform must begin. You talk of suppressing the vile 
groggeries, and of going down into the lower strata of human- 
ity to recover the victims of drunkenness, to find advocates 
of temperance, and to build up the whole structure of the 
commonwealth into sobriety and moral beauty. No; if the 
State and the Nation are ever saved, the process of reform 
must work in the other direction. Education, wealth, refine- 
ment, genius, must cast off a vice, before the vulgar and the 
ignorant will do it. The affluent classes must deny themselves 
the small pleasure of moderate drinking, before the poverty- 
stricken and the miserable will deny themselves the exhilara- 
tion of nerves, the exaggerated fancies, the supposed ecstasies, 
the deep forgetfulness, of a drunken revel. If you would 
cleanse a mephitic well or a Pontine marsh, you do not send a 
healthy man with a broom, or a bottle of carbolic acid, into 
the miasm and the death ; that would be to kill him, and help 



TEMPERANCE. 315 

no one else. No ; you pour from above, the mighty currents 
of healthful air into the mine, or the well, or the marsh. You 
open a wide and unimpeded channel into God's free light and 
God's free atmosphere, then let the tides rush. So must you. 
pour down the renovating light and the healthful atmosphere 
from the higher circles into the grog-holes. Change your own 
habits of moderate drinking; dash the wine-cup from your 
lips ; contend with these dangerous fashions of society ; show 
their guilt ; trace these desolating streams of influence to 
their awful termination ; arrest those who are on the down- 
ward current, and who are swiftly nearing the rapids; 
enlighten the bewildered judgment ; fortify the fickle will ; 
restore lost manhood ; hold back whole families sure to plunge 
in wretchedness ; save the tottering and the dying. 

THE RUM-SELLER'S MISTAKE. 

There is a legend of the Isle of Jersey, that all the water 
drawn from wells, on certain nights of the year, turns to 
blood. The rum-seller may imagine that he is drawing from 
deep wells of refreshing, gratifications for his present and his 
future years, elegancies and refinements for his house, gorgeous- 
ness of equipage and show, the name and the power of wealth, 
affluence, and social position for his children. But does he un- 
derstand what dishonor attaches to those accumulations, what 
distresses come in their trail ? They are not waters of refresh- 
ing; they are streams of blood. They are the agonies of wives 
forsaken, insulted, dishonored, broken-hearted. They are the 
wailings of little children, dying in their childhood under the 
hand of cruelty, or living an ignorant, squalid, degraded life. 

RELATIONS OF TEMPERANCE TO WOMAN. 

Temperance reform is largely woman's work. She forms 
the fashions of the times. She rules with an almost despotic 
power in social customs. She teaches the child. She deter- 
mines, very largely, the character and the habits of the youth. 
She guides the man ; it is his nature, it is his joy, that he may 
be led by the silken threads which she weaves around his affec- 



316 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

tions, by the beams of light which radiate from her intellect 
and from her life, to form his opinions. She has more influ- 
ence over this habit of drinking, than any legislator in his hall 
of debate ; than any orator, however high his range of elo- 
quence ; than any king on his throne. She can make wine- 
drinking unpopular in the family and disgraceful in society. 
She can hold back the young man and the young maiden from 
the debasing indulgence. Let it be understood that no young 
man can have access to your family who is a moderate drinker ; 
that in your estimation he has forfeited his manhood ; he has 
lost the guarantee of his purity ; he is unfit to have any great 
interest entrusted to his hands, so long as he drinks. Have 
you a husband, or a son, or a brother? They are not beyond 
the reach of the tempter. Hundreds of thousands, as noble 
and beautiful as your brother, your husband, your son, have 
been fascinated and destroyed by strong drink. They have 
become degraded in manners, perhaps utterly disgusting. 
They have become imbecile in mind, perhaps insane. They 
have become cruel in temper, perhaps murderous. They have 
become backsliders from a religious profession, perhaps blas- 
phemous and profane. They have fallen from affluence to 
poverty, from renown to infamy, from happiness to misery. 
They have dragged down into incurable wretchedness those 
associated with them by intimate family ties. They have en- 
tailed upon their children hereditary infirmities, and diseases 
loathsome and terrible. O woman of purity and faith, avoid 
such men ! Avoid the tempting drink which destroys them ; 
avoid the social fashions which, with treacherous guile, allure 
them from the path of rectitude. Lead not immortal men 
into this bondage and death. Cast out the wine-cup from 
your approval and your tolerance. " Wo unto him that put- 
teth the bottle to his neighbor's lips." Put not the bottle 
to the lips of your friend, or of your child. Let there be no 
Thanksgiving, nor Christmas, nor New-year's day, no jubilee, 
nor picnic, nor party, no wedding festival nor memorial cele- 
bration, whether in honor of a blessed birth or of a national 
emancipation ? where you, by silence or connivance, help on the 



TEMPERANCE. 317 

incipient drunkard. If drunkards must be made by any un- 
fortunate and unhallowed customs, let your soul be clear. In 
the great day of inquisition, when God is searching for blood, 
and asking of you, "Where is thy brother?" "Where is thy. 
son ? " let none of those stains be found on your garments. 

I might warn you for your own sake. Woman is wonder- 
fully defended, both by her own innate delicacy and by out- 
ward forces of opinion, from giving way to the temptations of 
drunkenness ; but she is tempted, nevertheless. " Wine is a 
mocker, and strong drink is raging," to woman as well as man. 
Appetite is subtle in binding its chains ; a diseased craving is 
tyrannous in ruling the life ; and this power of destruction 
breaks down all fences of age, or intellect, or beauty, or hope, 
or sex. More than seven thousand women were arrested last 
year for drunkenness in the city of New York. Eight hundred 
applications in a single year have been made to the Bingham- 
ton Asylum for Inebriates, for the admittance of ladies, from 
families of cultivation and wealth. But I prefer to appeal, 
not to your fear for self, but to your love for others ; to your 
quick, and deep, and generous sensibilities ; to your enlight- 
ened and Bible-taught conscience ; to your yearning and in- 
tense desire to allure dear friends to an honorable career, and 
to Heaven. 

HEALTH AS AFFECTED BY ALCOHOL. 

This question of temperance is a question of health, as well 
as of morals ; and it is in the early years, and by the regimen 
of the household, that the constitution is to be invigorated, 
and the foundations of health are to be laid. Teach your chil- 
dren to govern the appetite ; teach them to be regular as to 
times of eating and drinking; teach them to be moderate and 
self-denying in gratifications of the palate ; teach them total 
abstinence from all intoxicating drinks, or seeds of disease are 
sown, disordered and uncontrollable passions are created ; the 
whole life is open to the incursion of fevers, debilities, plagues, 
and deaths ; and before you are aware, your beloved child is 
chained by remorseless habits, or lies low in the grave. The 



318 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

physiological effects of alcoholic stimulants are obvious and 
alarming. Their action on the delicate tissues of the stomach, 
and on the more delicate nerves, is immediate. In the circu- 
lation of the blood, and the movements of the heart, and the 
entire system of the brain, they produce rapid derangement. 
A British soldier, wounded in battle, was placed in circum- 
stances to notice the results of small doses of alcohol. Two 
eminent army surgeons, after most careful observation, re- 
ported upon his case. By two fluid ounces of alcohol daily, 
the appetite was sensibly diminished, and the pulsations of 
the blood were increased thirteen per cent in twenty-four 
hours. The actual increase of labor, in the work of the heart, 
was equal to the lifting of fifteen tons one foot in twenty-four 
hours. Dr. Edward A. Phelps describes a young man of thirty, 
of excellent constitution, of prosperous business, of equable 
temperament, and happy social relations. A small daily allow- 
ance of wine was taken by him. He was never drunk ; he 
was never disguised with liquor; he was proud of his self- 
control. He had become convinced, by a physician's prescrip- 
tion, that he needed a daily stimulant and cordial. After five 
years of this course of life, headaches began. There was great 
sensitiveness over the whole head, a febrile condition of the 
entire body, and severe pain on holding the head down. Ab- 
stinence was prescribed, and that restored him. Again he 
returned to his old habits, and again the pains returned. More 
weakness and faintness, and general disorder came upon him, 
and after five weeks of typhoid fever, the vital forces were 
broken, and he died ; he was never a drunkard. He was never 
aware that the habit of drinking had conquered him. Still, 
he was a victim of alcoholic stimulants. 

No wonder that in a sedentary, intellectual, anxious life, 
where the constitution is delicate, where the nerves are high- 
strung and to the last degree sensitive, where the brain is per* 
petually drawing off forces from the heart and other vital 
organs of the body ; and where you are compelling the heart 
to the extra action of lifting fifteen tons a day, — no wonder 
that you lay u])on the heart a strain which brings the whole 



TEMPERANCE. 319 

machinery to a sudden and fatal pause. You call it ap6plexy 
or palsy, or the breaking of a blood-vessel, or nervous paraly- 
sis, or excessive brain-work. But the fact is, you have driven 
the whole system to unnatural action by stimulants ; you have 
laid too heavy a load upon the heart ; its pulses are unequal 
to the strain, and it stops. 

There is another important point in this matter of health. 
I refer to the moral relations between sense and soul, between 
matter and spirit, between the earthly and the heavenly. You 
long for a cheerful, elastic, happy frame of mind, — everybody 
of common-sense longs for this. With this hopeful, happy 
frame, you may rise in the morning with a song like the lark, 
and go about your daily cares with a perpetual warble of the 
senses and thanksgiving of the thoughts. You may imagine 
that this cheerfulness is mainly a thing of temperament. No, 
it is primarily a thing of religious trust, and secondarily a 
result of temperance. I beseech you, keep bewildering intox- 
icants out of your brain and out of your blood, if you would 
have a cheerful youth and a youthful old age. There are some 
who are always young. It is the youth of the soul, fresh and 
new, kind and loving, generous and magnanimous ; it is the 
clear eye, the frank smile, the joyous welcome, the intelligent 
look, the ardent affection, the exulting hope. Gray hairs can- 
not hide it ; they are its flowering crown. Wrinkles and hollow 
cheeks (which must come with age) cannot drive it away ; they 
are its sheltering nest. It is a quality, this youth of the soul, 
which comes from heaven, and will go back to heaven. It is 
a quality which grows out of faith and love and hope, and 
will abide while faith, hope, and charity endure. It is a confi- 
dence in the everlasting right. It is the indwelling of a beau- 
tiful, pure romance ; the dreams of youth going on into age, 
and then pluming their wings for the skies. It is a faith in 
God, the great Supreme ; a faith in Christ, the adorable Saviour; 
a faith in the Holy Ghost, whose witness is in the soul. It is 
a disinterested love, and a willingness to labor and suffer for 
human welfare; it is a Christian view of trial, as necessary 
to purge away earthly imperfections, and to fit for the ever- 



320 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

lasting joy; it is a willing obedience of the body, with all its 
organs, appetites, impulses, forces, to the high promptings of 
the sanctified soul. If you can get this happy and exalted 
frame of mind, as an illumination shining through this opaque 
body and through this clouded experience, it is worth all the 
self-denial of total abstinence, it is worth all the culture of faith 
and prayer. Age cannot dim your honor or your usefulness ; 
sickness cannot take away your love or your joy. 

PRACTICAL MEASURES IN CURING INTEMPERANCE. 

There are practical measures for the promotion of temper- 
ance which must be devised by the generous heart, and which 
must grow out of the love of parents for their children, of 
friends for their home. There are certain temptations which 
must be removed out of the way. The rum traffic must have 
its check ; scenes of drunkenness must be put out of sight ; 
social customs must be reformed. This may somtimes be done 
by law ; but if it cannot be done by law, it may be done and 
ought to be done by some wise and energetic scheme of com- 
bined influence. In New Braintree, Mass., thirty years ago, 
there was a rum-tavern. Sober and thoughtful men became 
convinced it was corrupting their youth. It was the resort of 
the idle, the shiftless, the obscene, the profane, the sensual. 
There was no prohibitory law to stop the sale. A righteous 
public sentiment could not stop it; prayers and tears and 
entreaties and arguments could not stop it, — the rum-seller 
was deaf to all persuasions. Those noble men combined their 
counsels. They said, We cannot see our sons tempted and 
destroyed. We have a duty of self-sacrifice, of pecuniary self- 
sacrifice, to prevent a higher and more terrible sacrifice. They 
drew up and passed a subscription-paper, and in less than a 
week had raised $7,000 to buy that hotel. They knew that it 
would not pay its way as a temperance house ; but one thing 
they were resolved to do, and that was, to banish rum from 
the traffic of the town. It was an extemporized, self-origi- 
nated, and self-sustained prohibitory law. They gave the new 
landlord his rent. So long as the $7,000 lasted, it should be a 



TEMPERANCE. 321 

temperance house, and the town should be a temperauce town. 
They revolutionized the whole sentiment of the town. Almost 
every man and woman came round to their side. They re- 
claimed their self-indulgent, wayward young men. Thirty 
years after there was not a pauper in the town ; there was no 
intoxicating liquor sold in the town; there was no drinking 
nor drunkenness ; there was no discord, nor riot, nor outrage, 
nor scandal. 

If the rum-shops of this city could be closed, and tempta- 
tion withdrawn from our youth ; if the opinions of our people 
could be reformed, and every family and church and school 
could become a total-abstinence society ; if two or three build- 
ings could be established in our city, where cheap lodgings and 
plain meals and coffee could be furnished at cost ; where young 
men from abroad, without friends and with limited means, 
could find rest and warmth and lights and a reading-room ; 
— then we should save thousands from a drunkard's grave. 

PROHIBITION. 

I believe in a prohibitory law ; I have believed in it for years ; 
I expect to believe in it till I die. It seems to me that its prin- 
ciple is one on which all just laws are founded, — the protection 
of society against a great public evil. The injury done to, the 
innocent by strong drink is more than that done by murder, 
or theft, or robbery, or fraud. If law may ever restrain 
wrong-doing, where the injury is foreseen and predetermined, 
where the motives are avarice and self-indulgence and self- 
will, where the pure and the innocent have no other protection 
against a harsh, unsympathizing spirit of cruelty, it may restrain 
in this case. 

You hold back the trader from selling a poison that may 
kill, or any nuisance that is disgusting and pernicious; why 
does such a restriction deal any more gently with personal 
liberty, than the prohibition of the rum traffic? You pro- 
hibit, by stern laws, the sale of strong drink to soldiers in 
the army in time of war, lest they be unprepared for the 
battle. You prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors to the 



322 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

Indian, lest the fire-water should render inveterate and in- 
curable the sav ageism of his nature. You shut out the 
gambler's tools, and the lottery ticket, and the rum-bottle 
from the military encampment, lest passion should rage with- 
out license and without restraint. I beg to know the dis- 
tinction, in principle, between the two forms of prohibition, 
and between the two crimes which are restrained. If one is 
a moral wrong, so is the other ; if one leads to barbarism, so 
does the other; if one makes an appeal to excited, boisterous, 
ungovernable desires, so does the other; if one endangers 
society, so does the other; if one unfits for the high duties 
of the citizen, for the tender love of the friend, for the sacred 
obligations of the family, so does the other. 

It is said, "The law is not executed." If it has not an 
executing force, it has an educating force. Either by the 
power of penalty restraining, or by the power of argument 
and instruction, elevating the purposes of the good, it does 
change the habits of an entire Commonwealth. Governor 
Perham says, in his recent message, " that in proportion to the 
number of its inhabitants, there is not another territory on 
the face of the globe that consumes so little intoxicating 
drink as the State of Maine." Is not that a great thing to 
say? Is not that a State worth living in? Must there not be 
many families of intelligence and harmony there? What has 
done it? The prohibitory law, of course. They have schools 
and colleges there, and they are seminaries of a high order; 
but we have others as good in other parts of the land. They 
have eloquent advocates of temperance there; but probably 
no more eloquent than the rest of the United States and of 
England. What brings that State the nearest to a total-absti- 
nence community of any in the world? Neither its ante- 
cedents nor its climate, neither its intellectual, nor its pecu- 
niary, nor its religious privileges are any more a safeguard to 
that State than the privileges of other States to them. It is 
the prohibitory law. 

The Republican says, " There is no considerable por- 
tion of people, outside- of Massachusetts and Maine, who 



TEMPERANCE. 323 

regard rum-drinking and rum-selling as a crime." We shall 
take the liberty in a moment to question the correctness of 
this statement, as a fact. But, for the sake of argument, ad- 
mitting the proposition, is it not a pleasant thing to find our- 
selves in agreement with a majority of the people of Massa- 
chusetts and Maine? There are half a million of instructed 
minds in those two States, that believe in the rightfulness and 
the expediency of a prohibitory law. It is not possible to find 
in any province on this globe, a half million of people, living 
adjacent to each other, who are more conscientious, intelligent, 
upright, exalted in all points of character, than this half mil- 
lion. Not even the aristocracy of England, nor the literati of 
Paris, nor the scholars of Germany, nor the Huguenots of 
France, nor the heroes of the Netherlands, nor the Covenan- 
ters of Scotland, have been or are of a higher type of charac- 
ter. It is a delightful and an encouraging thing to find your- 
selves in accord with them, on a great question of social 
obligation and of moral reform. 

With regard to the other remark, most certainly it was 
spoken without information. New Hampshire has a prohibi- 
tory law; Vermont has a prohibitory law; New York, in 
1868, gave a majority of sixty-seven thousand in favor of a 
prohibitory law. "Ohio," says the Cincinnati Commercial, 
" has enacted a law which puts the power of prohibition into 
the hands of the towns and the cities, and gives the people 
authority to shut up every liquor-den in the State." Pennsyl- 
vania, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, have enacted laws 
which give the right of prosecution against the rum-seller, 
and of recovering damages, so that the wife abused by a 
drunken husband, or the citizen injured by a drunken neigh- 
bor, can impose a penalty upon the rum-trafficker which is 
truly appalling, and which amounts to the sternest prohibition. 
Surely the idea that rum-drinking and rum-selling are both 
crimes, is a somewhat prevalent idea. There is not a civilized 
community on the face of the earth that allows the sale of 
intoxicating drinks, without any restriction. Every license- 
law implies limitations and checks. Surely, the Repub- 



324 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

lican spoke without information, or otherwise made a hasty 
and unconsidered statement. 

It is said that a prohibitory law interferes with personal 
liberty and inalienable rights. Why any more than any other 
law? The law places no penalty or check upon any man's 
free-will, until the meditated wrong is carried out into overt 
act, and the injurious blow is struck upon society. We lay 
no restrictions upon individual liberties, where those liberties 
do not encroach upon another man's rights. A person may 
sin against his own soul or his own life ; if his sin be in the 
thoughts unknown to others, or in a secret place where his 
example cannot reach others, the law does not touch him. 
Thus far the wrong is between the sinner and his conscience, 
between the sinner and his God. His retribution may be a 
very great and awful one. It may be the loss of peace and of 
influence ; it may be the loss of the soul. But the prohibitory 
law enters not. The law is for public injuries, — for wrongs, 
which by power of contagion will spread, or by power of 
direct injury will destroy. In such a case, if you hold to 
the right of government at all, if you do not throw man 
unfettered upon the weltering tides of passion, to rage in 
universal license, then prohibit, prohibit ! — there is no other 
consistent, nor safe, nor Christian rule. Use all methods of 
persuasion to produce total abstinence. Use love in the 
family, science in the school, patriotism in the public assembly, 
gospel doctrine in the sanctuary. Organize associations ; com- 
bine social forces ; hold meetings and conventions ; employ 
the press ; be faithful in the parlor ; bring your children up in 
habits of abstinence. Bring them to some place of decision, 
no matter how sacred, and there pledge them by immutable 
covenant, as Hannibal was pledged against Borne, against 
rum, forever, and forever, and forever to hate and renounce 
intoxicating drinks. 

THE RUIN OE INTELLECT EROM ALCOHOL. 

The ruin of the intellect is made complete by intemperance, 
and many other forms of ruin follow. In the illustration of this 



TEMPERANCE. 325 

principle, you might catalogue an infinite series of crimes ; an 
infinite series of most melancholy, deplorable follies, where 
many a strong intellect, beautiful as the stars of night, brilliant 
as the sun of the morning, rising like the sun in splendor and 
in glory, that bid fair to make a happy day for wide circles of 
friends, has gone swiftly down, out of light into darkness, out 
of beauty into deformity, out of blessed hope into utter despair. 
I might begin with such names as Burns and Byron, poets of 
unsurpassed power ; as Charles James Fox and Sheridan, ora- 
tors of acknowledged eminence; as Goldsmith and Dickens, 
authors of world-wide fame; and I know not where the list 
would end, of mighty souls, cast down from their summits of 
privilege, into weakness and dishonor. Look at the distin- 
guished Gottschalk, the most brilliant piano-player of the world, 
recently deceased. Born in New Orleans, educated in Paris, 
holding entranced all assemblies by his music, at the age of 
forty-one, in San Francisco, in the flush of redundant health, 
at a vast musical concert, carrying the whole audience with 
him by a very deluge of harmony, he dropped instantly dead. 
What killed him? Wine, opium, gambling, licentiousness, 
into which he plunged without restraint. Look at Daniel W. 
Appleton, the grandson of Daniel Webster, born to talents, 
and honors, and fortunes, and hopes, which you would think 
an angel might covet, sinking into weaknesses and disgraces, 
from which a fiend would eagerly flee ; thrust into a jail at 
Neponset overnight, because too beastly to be seen by civil- 
ized people; setting fire to the jail with his matches and cigars, 
burning himself almost to a crisp before morning, so that in 
less than a fortnight he died a miserable and despised wreck of 
humanity. Look at Capt. Eugene Smith, nephew of Abbott 
Lawrence, passing through a career of honor in the war, en- 
tering as private, and rising from rank to rank, till twice he 
led on the whole regiment to the assault, and led them out 
from battle, scarred and victorious, after all the higher officers 
were killed. His uncle, G. W. Smith, president of the Empire 
Life Insurance Company, New York city, had given the young 
man a place in his office, with large chances of promotion and 



326 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

wealth. Alas, alas ! the rum madness had seized him, the rum 
fiend had conquered him. He lost his place in New York. 
He went to New Orleans. He did not keep himself from the 
grog-shop, nor the dens of iniquity. He had no character on 
which to build confidence. He could not get work. He 
plunged himself from the fourth story of a billiard saloon and 
perished. Look at the long list of past members of Congress, 
who may well be termed illustrious and unhappy drunkards : 
Intellect ruined; reputation lost; honor and influence thrown 
away; fortunes and hopes, of body and soul, of time and 
eternity, squandered, utterly squandered, by the insane desire 
for intoxicating drinks. Once they stood in the Nation's eye ; 
they held the Nation's ear; knowledge, eloquence, integrity, 
genius, power, belonged to them; no gift which the Nation 
could bestow was deemed too great for them; — now they 
have fallen so low, there is none to do them reverence. The 
sooner and the deeper they can slumber in oblivion, the better 
will it be for them and the Nation they have disgraced. 
Oh, woeful list! Oh, fearful hallucination! Oh, melancholy 
dishonor ! 






SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 



[The following sermon was originally prepared as an address, with the title, 
"A Living Theology the Source of the Orator's Power." As such it was first 
delivered before the Theological Society at Dartmouth College, and subsequently 
at Middlebury and Williams Colleges. Mention of Dr. Foster's work on the ad- 
dress, and of its delivery, is made in the Biographical Sketch on page 93. The ad- 
dress was delivered at Dartmouth College, July 27, 1859. On the 13th of the same 
month Eufus Choate had died. The original address, in summing up the charac- 
teristics of the possessor of true eloquence as a man of genius, applied this 
description to Mr. Choate. At this point Dr. Foster, turning from his manuscript, 
gave an extempore tribute to the memory of the great orator, which was charac- 
terized, by those who heard it, as befitting both him it eulogized and the address 
in which it occurred. The address was afterwards remodeled and rewritten to 
serve as a sermon at installations, Dr. Foster being frequently requested to 
preach on such occasions. In this form only it is preserved. It was delivered at 
Maiden, Mass., in the spring of 1871, at his son's installation as pastor there, and 
subsequently at Dunstable and Essex, Mass. It has great value from a biograph- 
ical point of view, as setting forth the ideal which Dr. Foster was ever striving- 
after as a preacher of the Gospel.] 

1 Cor. 1 : 21. — "It pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to 
save them that believe." 

The preaching which God appoints is deemed foolishness by 
some, but it is the wisdom and the power of God. It is drawn 
directly from the fountains of infinite truth. It accords with 
the highest deductions of science, and with the profoundest 
consciousness of the soul. It has strength of argument, and 
beauty of poetry, and pathos of love, and grandeur of genius, 
equal to any other development of mind, and often beyond 
any common range of intellect or power. If the preacher 
proclaim the Word of God, and be imbued with the Spirit of 
God, there is an authority in that argument, and a weight of 
conviction in that appeal, not found in any treatises of science 
or any eloquence of the schools. 



328 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

I propose to consider some of the constituents of pulpit 
power, and I mention these five, — 

I. A Believing Spirit. 

II. Consecutive Thought. 

III. Independent Thought. 

IV. Simplicity of Style. 
V. Loyalty to Truth. 

I. The faithful preacher is distinguished by a believing 
spirit. He exalts the reason by the exercises of faith ; he stirs 
the fountains of emotion and touches the springs of heroism, 
by appeals to the unseen and the eternal. He inquires after 
the Right, and planting his foot upon the Revelation, he does 
not turn aside from that foundation. The laws of God are 
immutable, and all human theories which are a departure from 
those laws, however they may be extolled as improvements by 
short-sighted mortals, introduce only confusion, and must pass 
away. It is a day of speculation and novel propositions. Bold 
vaticinations are made of a good time coming. Brilliant 
hypotheses are put forward, sustained by fanciful trains of 
thought, and intermingled largely with eulogies on man. 
Commerce and science and letters are made the agencies of a 
new Evangel. New themes, new aspirations are placed before 
literary men. 

The scholar is apt to say, " I have present palpable posses- 
sions of the mind ; I have definite, demonstrative treasures of 
knowledge ; I have a conscious, positive, exalted soul-force. 
Of what interest are your religious propositions to me? I 
prefer the seen and the temporal, to the unseen and the spirit- 
ual ; I prefer the present to the future ; I prefer the positive 
and the scientific to the hypothetical and the prophetic." Now 
it is the business of the preacher to meet this state of educated 
mind, and to show that the treasures of religion are present 
and palpable, are positive and scientific, and absolutely 
immeasurable. There is harmony between philosophy and 
faith ; there is agreement between the doctrines of the ever- 
lasting Word and the doctrines of true reform. Not only 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 329 

so, — there is no permanent philosophy without faith ; there is 
no true reform without the Bible. And the public sentiment 
must be brought to this position of faith, or our political and 
social improvements are like the beautiful cloud-scenes on the 
top of Mount Washington, driven by passions and controver- 
sies as those clouds are by rushing, wintry winds. The popular 
mind needs to be pervaded with seriousness, and to be restored 
to its true equipoise by the discipline of religious instruction 
and of prayer. We move in the midst of agitations. We 
are not as yet so grossly sensual, as we are vainly excitable, 
though the passion for frivolity and amusement will lead, by 
obvious processes, to grovelling indulgences and sordid pleas- 
ures. We rush after wealth, rather for the enthusiasm of the 
chase than for a miserly love of gold. 

The nation plunges into political campaigns as if a thousand 
worlds were depending, when the general motive is eagerness 
for party, rather than zeal for principles. Commerce, manu- 
factures, agriculture, politics, have their perpetual revolutions 
and excitements. Education and literature are keeping up an 
intensity of thought and emotion. All minds are eager after 
novelty, in the news of the day, in the projects of the hour, 
in the dreams of the poet, in the fancies of the metaphysician. 
It is difficult to hold the mind back from vagaries, and to keep 
it to logical processes. We need results of rigid reasoning, to 
keep us from wild, delirious hopes; we need religion to 
balance and guide our unbridled imaginations ; we need the 
Bible to quell the rhapsodies of the imagination, by the high 
and solemn doctrines of self-renunciation, by the uplifting 
energies of faith. We need schools of religious instruction, 
and men of a profound spiritual belief, to give to the public 
mind though tfuln ess, comprehensiveness, depth. 

The ship that sails safely across the Atlantic must have 
ballast in the hold, as well as canvas in the air ; if we would 
not suffer shipwreck while passing across life's uncertain sea, 
we must have solidity of principle, as well as poetic dreams. 
We are living an artificial life, and this creates artificial wants. 
It is important that the popular imagination and thought be 
22 



330 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

restored to a state of more earnest meditation and sobriety ; 
no longer eager after luxury, wealth, pleasure, after sensational 
literature and sensational debate, but persuaded to take a 
careful estimate of the laws of rectitude, and of the great 
social and religious duties of the citizen. We are intense, but 
fickle ; we are heated to fever-heat, and often the fever runs 
into delirium. Our lives are lives of distraction and weari- 
ness and disappointment, because we are absorbed with an 
inferior good ; we are satisfied with human speculations; we 
do not seize a divine and infinite treasure. We alternate from 
brighter hopes to anxious forebodings, and lose positive good 
in chasing the phantoms of a dreaming mind. More Biblical 
instruction, and less vain speculation ; more controlling faith, 
and less of the play of fancy, — would save us. Unless the 
power of a believing spirit can save us, I believe that, as a 
people, we are on the verge of English ritualism, or Italian 
idolatry, or German infidelity, or French profligacy. We 
need more confidence in the Bible, more Baconian induction 
from admitted facts, and less transcendental subtlety. 

The tendency and the demand of the times is to trust in 
genius and sagacity. Follow expediencies and obey worldly 
maxims ; for the wisdom of the age is superlative, and faith is 
vain, if it has not the recommendation of science. Seek for 
the patronage of the great ; for truth is feeble, if it has not the 
imprimatur of distinguished men. Religion is good as a 
civilizer, but of little value as a regenerator. Banish barba- 
risms, educate ignorance, ameliorate laws, introduce comforts, 
but be not anxious to create anew the heart. You have a 
bramble tree; raise figs upon it by cutting off the thorns, not 
by grafting a new shoot into the old stock. There are writers 
and speakers who are careful to show how freedom and refine- 
ments have grown to their present height and power, by the 
side of the Gospel ; but they do not show the reverse process, 
how degradation and barbarisms have come in where the 
Gospel was absent. They do not exhibit the utter futility of 
the researches of the learned and the philosophies of the wise 
to build up virtue without the Gospel. They go over the his- 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 331 

tory of Christian nations, and describe the discoveries of the 
scholar and the inventions of the engineer ; they magnify 
the beauty of art and the grandeur of poetry ; they sing 
paeans to liberty and to human reason ; they recite the statis- 
tics of the politician and the blessings of good government. 
Such reasonings, unduly dwelt upon, lead to an entire forget- 
f ulness of Christ and His Cross ; such reasoners substitute 
forms for faith. They defy the reason, and propagate a 
religion of self-complacency; they set up an image to litera- 
ture, and science, and the arts. 

They centre all thoughts' upon the present life. Genius is 
more than Revelation, philosophy is more than faith, and the 
inspiration of Christ and His apostles is only one of the neces- 
sary and the natural steps in the advancement of the human 
mind. Man advances by experiments, and observation, and 
intuitions, and reasonings ; and when he gets through his 
ingenuities, he is absorbed again in the Deity, of which he was 
an effluence at the first. All this may be beautiful as a theory, 
and satisfactory as an anticipation to those who have not the 
Christian's hope. But it is all a figment of the speculating 
brain. Where are the facts, to lie as a basis? Where are the 
testimonies from nature, to support the hypothesis? Where 
are the evidences from the inward consciousness ? Where is the 
accordance with admitted rules of logic ? Most of all, where 
are the proofs from Scripture and from the dealings of God 
with His church? Shall we bring down the doctrine of God 
to the level of finite minds, and ask for the patronage of 
diplomacy and the consent of worldly wisdom, before we 
accept God's declarations? Shall we dig wells in the desert, 
when God gives us rain from Heaven ? Shall we attempt to 
bow down and adore the god of this world, in order to gain 
an accession of his territory ? Shall we cast ourselves head- 
long from the pinnacle of the temple, built by human hands, 
in order that some treacherous theory of the modern times 
may save us ? ISTo, it is not the method of the believing heart, 
nor the argument of true, ministerial power. 

II. The successful minister, imbued with the spirit and 



332 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

power of the Bible, is marked by consecutive thought. God 
lays down eternal principles, and does not always hold himself 
amenable to our reason to exhibit causes and disclose con- 
nections. Inspired men have written proverbs. Congresses, 
endowed with national authority, may make laws. It is the 
privilege of judges to establish precedents, and sometimes to 
dictate rules of judgment. It is permitted to men, like Bacon 
and Pascal, who have an intuitive perception of law, whose 
genius shines with a brilliant and far-reaching lustre, to be 
sententious and positive. But the successful preacher does 
not speak ex cathedra ; he does not deny the right of private 
judgment to other men ; he does not assume to explain, with 
infallible interpretation, the Book of God ; he does not make 
his own intellect supreme in the field of discussion. He gives 
his reasons, and he admits that his discourse is made up of 
opinions, not of laws. The public speaker who undertakes, in 
this age of the world, and in this country of universal culture 
and of democratic thinking, to carry his points, either by 
sneers and ridicule on the one hand, or by dogmatism and 
force of will on the other, has sadly mistaken the true methods 
of conviction, and the true sources of popular power. His lot 
should have been cast in the Middle Ages, and in a semi-civil- 
ized society; and even then his words of arrogant and vain 
assumption never could have survived the progress of free 
inquiry. 

There is a fixed law which controls all legitimate thinking; 
there is a staple of argument which underlies permanent 
power. Take any speaker, who holds the attention of an 
audience, and who imparts to them instruction, and his propo- 
sitions follow one another, not by arbitrary rules, not by 
fatalistic conjunction, not by the mere determination of an 
energetic mind, that such shall be the relations of truth, but by 
kindred ties which God has appointed, — by the consanguinity 
of truths where you find the fellowship of resemblance and 
co-operation. There are established rules by which processes 
of reasoning are carried on, new truths are evolved, right 
judgments are formed, The mind that does not see those 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 333 

rules is ignorant and feeble ; the mind that cannot see them is 
sluggish and imbecile ; the mind that does see them, and wil- 
fully rejects them, is lunatic or perverse. We may have a mul- 
titude of imaginations, whether brilliant or rapid it matters 
little ; if they do not spring from sound premises and stand 
in just relations to each other, they are valueless. They are 
reveries, which have no meaning, nor aim, nor force. They 
are fancies, which amuse and please, but springing from no 
cause, they lead to no result ; they are beautiful, but transient 
as the shooting-star. They are day-dreams, or night-dreams 
(it is of little consequence which), which have no method. 
Crotchets of the flighty brain are not arguments of the im- 
pressive speaker. Vain and fond conceits are not necessary 
truths. They may be prized by the mere literary epicurean ; 
they may belong to the mind which is eager to startle, but 
careless of instruction; but they indicate no wisdom nor 
abiding power. 

There is no genuine power, except in truth seen in its con- 
nections and presented in impressive forms. Thought is in 
itself spiritual and immaterial. It is the product, the mani- 
festation, of an immortal spirit ; but to be communicated to 
creatures of the flesh, it must have a form. It may reveal it- 
self to the eye, to the ear, to the other senses, and be conveyed 
by them to the sensitive, all-apprehending soul. It may be 
conveyed by words, which are purely and only signs of 
thought; by tones and emphases, which give new significance 
to words ; by looks and attitudes and gestures, which vary 
and intensify the meaning of language ; but all this does not 
convey the true power of thought, nor reach the highest sub- 
limity of eloquence. There is a form in which thought may 
be presented, rising above all power of single words and sepa- 
rate sentences. It is a more subtle and sublimated form, which 
we call logic; it is the combination of agreeing thoughts; it 
is their arrangement in fit proportion, so as to constitute rea- 
soning, and sustain an important principle. In books, truly 
conceived and truly wrought, it is science; in speeches, self- 
supporting and complete, it is argument; in the sermons of 



334 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

instructed men, whose intellect and emotion are fused together, 
each subordinate to a specific end, each controlled by a correct 
taste, each the handmaid of religious truth, it is eloquence. 
And these forms of thought surpass the possible power of any- 
single word or single sentence, as much as the oak of the for- 
est surpasses the acorn. 

It is by this coherence of thought that the impressive 
preacher avoids a tiresome monotony. He imparts to com- 
mon themes a surprising interest and power. It is character- 
istic of him, that he does not hunt for novelties and eccentrici- 
ties, but the most familiar topics become associated, under his 
handling, with the most admirable reasonings. The charge is 
sometimes brought against religious discussion, that it is in- 
fected with an intolerable sameness, and therefore tedium. 
We find not infrequently such a representation as this, " The- 
ology is a system ; therefore it has no variety, nor freshness, 
nor power. The same list of texts is strung on identical 
strings, in somewhat different order; but the j>reacher, going 
over his heads of discourse, is like the Catholic counting his 
beads, as he recites his Paternoster. The whole round of doc- 
trine, from the fall of man to the saints' final glorification? 
must be jumbled into one hour's declamation. Talents vary, 
forms vary, discipline varies, but evangelical sermons are the 
same, from week to week and year to year." This is carica- 
ture. Let us look at the grain of fact it contains. The 
theology of the Bible is a system. This is true. But if the 
recapitulation of familiar doctrines is a source of dulness, 
how wonderful it is that this system has maintained its hold 
upon the minds of men, never ceasing, never weakened, for 
two thousand years ; as influential to-day as when Paul rea- 
soned out of the Scriptures, as when Augustine or Luther 
expounded heavenly doctrine ! Well may we regard this sys- 
tem of theology as the power of God ! 

Take such an example as was seen when Rev. Dr. Griffin 
preached his Park-street Lectures in Boston. The enemies of 
orthodoxy rushed to hear them with extreme avidity. They 
left the house with vehement opposition to the truth; they 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 335 

would stop at the corners of the streets in great heat to fight 
the battle over again. Then, on the next Sabbath evening, 
they would crowd the house once more, again to hear, again 
to dislike, again to return. The doctrines themselves were 
wonderful, if they could thus overcome the frightful monotony 
of the preaching. Suppose — if the supposition be possible — 
that the thoughts of the Gospel preacher are commonplace ; 
his analogies only fanciful ; his diction poor ; his argument 
feeble; his succession of topics monotonous. How amazing 
is the interposition of God, who disdains the excellency of 
human wisdom and human sjoeech, and with such impotent 
weapons of war demolishes the strongholds of error and of 
sin! 

But is there not some mistake about this prevalent idea that 
systematic theology is monotonous and dull? How is it with 
science, in other departments of study and learning? Is our 
knowledge usually less interesting because it comes to us in 
the form of an established and unchanging system ? Would 
not it be well, for variety's sake, to break it up into incoherent 
parts, and to scatter it abroad as fragmentary truth ? Would 
it not be a relief to the tedium of the college professor, and 
a deliverance from the possibility of wearisome sameness, to 
have a little more uncertainty in his principles, and a little 
less logic in the steps of his progress? Would it not be desir- 
able that he should amend his Davies, and his Euclid, and his 
Olmstead, by bringing a little (or a good deal, it matters not 
which) of the rhetoric of the tyro, and the speculation of the 
sciolist, and the rhapsody of the scientific infidel, into his teach- 
ings ? Would it not be well, in order to get out of the hum- 
drum path where former scholars have walked, to mingle 
empiricism with science, and guesses with first truths ? Would 
it not be well to escape from that monotony which believes 
the very principles now which were admitted when our fathers 
were boys, and which, in spite of all remorseless iconoclasts, 
are likely to live on through another generation? Which are 
most to be coveted in science, — things that are true and not 
new, or things that are new and not true ? 



336 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

How is it in Jurisprudence and Law ? Does it render the 
argument of a great advocate more trite and tame, because 
he brings forward corroborating opinions from Coke and 
Blackstone, and his precedents from Holt and Mansfield, 
rather than from the petty bench of a neighboring county? 
Does it detract from the decision of the judge, that he adopts 
a legal system ; that his mind is familiar with an elaborate 
science of jurisprudence ; that he draws his quotations and 
principles from Roman law and from rules of eternal equity, 
as well as from the last decision of a court of common pleas ? 
Yes, we plead guilty to the fact that our theology is a science, 
and that the rules of our sacred schools, and the common- 
sense and adoring faith of our churches, compel the preacher 
to abide somewhat closely within the bounds of a system and 
the fences of logic. But we traverse the plea, that there is 
any lack of variety, or freshness, or interest, or force, attach- 
ing to his discourses on this account. 

There is no paucity in the themes which he considers; 
there is no barrenness in the field which he reaps ; there is 
no sudden shortening of the line which holds him, when he 
launches upon the ocean of God's truth. He may sail forever 
on that unfathomable deep, and find no shore. The relations, 
applications, and results of divine truth are absolutely bound- 
less. Suppose there were only thirty doctrines in the system 
of the Scriptures, as there were thirty-two nails in the shoes 
of the horse, for which the clown was ready to pay one cent 
for the first, two cents for the second, four cents for the third, 
and so on, — he very soon found the bottom of his purse, and 
also of his brains, but he did not make the last payment. In 
like manner, these shallow speculators, afraid of the monotony 
of Scripture doctrine, will very soon find the end of their 
knowledge, though not of the system of revealed divinity. 
There is danger, indeed, and imminent danger, of monotony 
and dulness in the preacher, as in the legal advocate and in 
the literary lecturer ; but the source of his peril is not in his 
subject, but in himself. Original power of thought, guided 
by taste, enriched by learning, enforced by logic, will make 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 337 

the most familiar topic, however hackneyed, new and rich. A 
meagre, feeble mind can make nothing out of any subject. 

III. The truly impressive preacher is characterized by in- 
dependent thought. The field of truth is broad enough, and 
the subjects of discussion are numerous enough, to allow end- 
less variety and constant originality. Originality comes by 
viewing thoughts from the centre of one's own consciousness 
and experience ; bringing truths into new relations, and sus- 
taining them by new facts ; extending widely the faculty of 
illustration ; entering into the grandeur of an historic occasion 
or solemn interest of a religious occasion ; taking up the theme 
appropriate to the hour, and showing the applications of a 
wide and various knowledge to that theme; deducing from 
the revolutions of the world, and from the comparison of 
opinions, important principles of action. This is independent 
thinking, and this is eloquent speech. No man has ever yet 
exhausted any theme of education, or ethics, or religion, — no 
single mind ever will, for the combined wisdom of the world 
is always greater than the wisdom of any one mortal. And 
the hidden wisdom of God, which he has reserved for the 
study of eternity, is an ocean, illimitable, unfathomable, incon- 
ceivable. The noblest thinkers of the race, in seeking to cross 
this ocean, are like rude aborigines of a new continent, — ignor- 
ant as yet of the laws of navigation, with courage that is soon 
appalled by the mystery before them, in frail canoes, they skirt 
along the shore. The minds which are most adventurous and 
strong are not permitted to cross that deep. But we may 
hope — with study and with faith accepting the Revelation, 
gathering up the knowledge of the past, using faithfully our 
powers — to stretch out somewhat further on the broad ex- 
panse, to feel that we are in the true course to the final 
harbor, and that gales of heaven are filling our sails, to feel 
that we are at last on the sea, and that our horizon is no 
longer bounded, by land. 

The independent thinker, using diligently his own faculties, 
has no occasion to fear that he shall run in another man's 
track, or encroach on another man's domains. There is room 



338 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER, 

enough in the sky for the stars, and there is room enough in 
this world for all various minds, and for all self-originated and 
well-founded views of truth. Independent thinkers are not 
separated into warring sections. They may follow the bent of 
their own mind, and the lead of their own peculiar discipline, — 
one more metaphysical ; another more imaginative and poeti- 
cal ; a third more historical ; a fourth more profoundly theo- 
logical and critically exegetical; a fifth more practical, — but 
they all belong to one fellowship, they are all advancing one 
blessed cause, and the more original the thought the deeper 
the love. No convincing speaker can be a servile borrower. 
His thoughts must be his own, from whatever source the 
germs of his knowledge come, whether from observation or 
conversation or books ; whether from history or nature ; 
whether from colleges or the wider seminary of life. His 
thoughts must be his own, taken into his soul and fused there 
under the furnace glow of his own hearty emotions, mingled 
always with that which he has felt in his own experience and 
reasoned out by his own meditations. The conceptions of all 
active minds are wonderfully suggestive to other thinkers. 
They lead at once to other trains of reflection, associated and 
kindred, ) et independent and original. 

Our best ideas and our largest communications of knowl- 
edge are simply the natural growth of seed planted in the 
mind from other sources. Intellect sharpens intellect ; heart 
responds to heart; suggestive thoughts are spoken or written. 
They start new trains of thought ; they wake up the dormant 
faculties ; they send the mind out in unwonted directions, 
ranging widely and eagerly after truth. And thus have come 
most of the discoveries, brilliant essays, impressive appeals of 
these later times. The public speaker who thinks to be wholly 
independent of other men's thoughts, will soon come to repeat 
himself, and very poor repetition it will be. At the same time, 
the mind of the progressive and fruitful preacher is a foun- 
tain, and not a mere reservoir. He must have independent 
reflection, as well as acquired knowledge. But if his mind be 
a fountain, just like every other fountain, it will be attracting 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 339 

the living waters from all sides. Vivifying streams, silent, 
ceaseless, numberless, will be permeating through the earth, 
and coming down from the sky, and running along in the grass, 
and filling the fountain with a constant influx, while it sends 
forth its sparkling currents widely to refresh. It is this which 
distinguishes the unfailing spring from the stagnant pool ; it 
is this which sejDarates the fertile intellect from one that is 
sterile and dull. 

The independent thinker, instructed by gospel truth, sur- 
veying the boundless immensity of knowledge, cannot be other- 
wise than humble. Every truth is opposed by its antagonistic 
falsehood ; every holy doctrine and just theory has its coun- 
terfeit. Amid the many important discoveries which have 
been made by the human mind, there have been innumerable 
baseless experiments, wild conjectures, disappointing failures. 
Therefore he does not rush rashly and hap-hazard into new and 
untried schemes, so as to make it the principal business of his 
life to revolutionize opinions erroneously formed. Life is too 
short to be spent in unlading false cargoes of counterfeit prod- 
uct, when fragrant spices and tropical pearls are to be found 
in so many islands of the sea. 

The faithful preacher desires to think independently, yet he 
is more anxious to think correctly. He is anxious to investi- 
gate science and comprehend its relations. He searches after 
the philosophy of mind, and morals, and society. He brings 
the history and opinions of the past to bear upon his points. 
He allows the Bible to stand as umpire between him and his 
conclusions. Independent thinking is just thinking only after 
patient and persevering investigation. Bacon, and Milton, and 
Locke, and Edwards, crept along slowly towards the truth. 
Long-continued research had no weariness for them. They 
had no wings to vault into the heavens ; or, if they had, they 
gave them time to grow, and they mapped out clearly their 
aerial voyage before they attempted to fly. They made learn- 
ing subservient to discovery. With all their force of imagi- 
nation, with all their exuberance of intellectual strength, they 
did not venture to propound new theories, till the basis had 



340 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

been laid by years of meditation, and by comprehensive erudi- 
tion. They did not suppose they could weave systems, which 
should advance human intelligence, and check the course of 
error, out of the mere fibres of the brain, as easily as the spider 
weaves its web. And if any one would think independently 
and wisely, he must cherish equal self-distrust, and an equal 
sense of dependence upon God. 

Independent thinking is very likely to run into intellectual 
vagaries and eccentricities. It is easy to do strange things, to 
say strange things, for the sake of arresting attention and 
gaining notoriety. But there is no thought which wanders 
from the Bible that is true, there is no theory which rejects 
the grace of Christ that is profitable. Novelties are not in- 
spiration ; the exaggerations of the romancer are not genius ; 
the contortions and skill of the rope-dancer are not the en- 
during vigor that accomplishes a life-work ; the sprinkling of 
the street-hydrant is not a universal shower, although some 
companies of men and boys may think the hydrant is the more 
wonderful invention. Probably some clouds will continue to 
give rain after these water-machines have adjourned ; proba- 
bly the Bible will continue to rule the souls of men and shine 
on for future centuries, after several brilliant gas-lights, and 
shavings kindled in the chimney-corner, and even auroral dis- 
plays, have disappeared. 

But after all these limitations upon independent thought, 
and these considerations which should inspire modesty in the 
investigating mind, the Christian thinker, desiring to instruct 
his fellow-men, hopes it may be possible to learn something 
which other minds have not learned. He hopes that some 
new truth may break forth out of the word of God, beyond 
the conclusions of Luther and Calvin, beyond the systems of 
Edwards and Bellamy, beyond the practical rules of Wesley 
and Whitfield, beyond the eloquence of Robert Hall and 
Francis Wayland. He is not overconfident of this, nor is he 
vainly self-reliant ; still he hopes for progress. He hopes some 
additional argument, evidence, and illustration may be found, 
by which Bible truth shall be recommended to the consciences 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 341 

of men; he hopes some additional methods may be devised, 
still more effectual for the reform of ignorance and vice and 
crime ; he prays for the elevation of morals ; he longs to 
see the poor, the profane, and the wretched gathered within 
the shelter of Christ's fold ; he would banish passions and 
prejudices and wars. His soul is burdened with unutterable 
longings, and his mind is laboring with ceaseless plans, if per- 
adventure God would give him wisdom and grace to bring in 
some improvement, to strike some telling blow upon stereo- 
typed forms of falsehood, upon the hoary head of infidelity, 
upon the strong fortifications of sin. He looks upon the his- 
tory of the past, and he sees revolution following revolution, 
and great advances often resulting from insignificant causes. 
He believes in progress. Truth is a vast and boundless sea. 
There may be undiscovered continents in that ocean. Sailing 
calmly in the sunlight of God, wafted by the winds of heaven, 
availing himself of known laws of navigation, making Christ 
his pilot and prayer his hope, even he may discover some 
peaceful and flowery island, untrodden as yet by human foot. 
But his hopes, though large, are not built on human strength 
nor on vain self-confidence, and the hopes which he does cher- 
ish, he cherishes only in meek dependence on the Word and 
the Spirit of God. If, like Albert Barnes or Joseph Addison 
Alexander, when they devised their commentaries ; if, like 
Lyman Beecher, when he boldly withstood the advances of in- 
temperance and infidelity in Connecticut and in Boston ; if, 
like Moses Stuart, when he took the key of a more natural and 
scholarly exegesis to unlock the dark problems of Scripture, — 
he may be permitted to devise an original and valuable plan of 
unfolding the ways of God to men, he rejoices, and to almighty 
grace he ascribes the praise. 

IV. The earnest, persuasive preacher attains simplicity of 
aim and style. He seeks to penetrate at once to the centre of- 
his subject, and to present the entire argument without cir- 
cumlocution or digression. He searches for the soul of elo- 
quence, and not for the form and the counterfeit of it. The 
world has too often been cheated by shams, and the genuine 



342 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

thinker asks for realities, and not for shows. He asks for the 
spirit of power. How shall I attain grandeur of thought? 
Where shall I find a soul-quickening and soul-elevating mo- 
tive? Where are the sublime results for which an immortal 
spirit may worthily live ? Show me this inward power, this 
ennobling soul-force, says the weary, anxious thinker, or show 
me no forms, make me no prophecies, delude me with no words. 
Now the doctrine of Christ, the true Scriptural theology, takes 
its starting-point on earth, amid vapors of darkness and agonies 
of fear, but its goal is in the highest heavens. It rises instantly 
out of the mist, to the clear atmosphere of divine truth and 
celestial visions. Its hand, by prayer, takes hold of the hand 
of God ; its communion, by love and by self-sacrificing deeds, 
is with Christ ; its agency of resistless might, working with 
it and for it, is the Holy Ghost. The preacher, proclaiming 
this doctrine, does not have to beg a hearing. His message 
has authority. It does not pass by the ear, like idle wind, for- 
gotten with the breath that utters it. It does not fall, like 
water on the rock, that cannot be gathered up. The scoffer, 
attempting to overthrow it by witty sneers, might as well 
strike, with his puny arm, against the rock of Gibraltar, or 
puff, with his scanty breath, against the north wind. Such a 
message will be received and reverenced. Worldliness and 
unbelief stand abashed before it. Even scholarship and amia- 
bleness appear in its presence insignificant in worth. Such a 
religion gives to its possessor courage, and nerve, and tone. 
Both intellect and heart are invigorated by it, and filled with 
a dauntless purpose. Such a preacher is modest, as knowing 
that he stands on the borders of infinite truth ; he is earnest, 
as knowing that it is the truth of God ; he is gentle as John 
the beloved disciple, but fearless as Paul the cogent reasoner. 
He is calm and thoughtful as Melanchthon, forcasting the fu- 
ture ; he is ardent and determined as Luther, turning not back, 
although princes and prelates and armies, with menacing ter- 
rors, might stand in his path. He does not obtrude his opin- 
ions, yet he has opinions ; he does not run around to proclaim 
his independence, yet he maintains independence. Paying 



. SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 343 

due deference to the opinions of others, he walks in no beaten 
track, for the sake of treading in other men's footsteps ; neither 
does he turn out of the road into unknown paths, because 
others have walked before him. He clings to the doctrine of 
God, and holds it forth, with all the strength of argument and 
of earnestness imparted by profound convictions. Asking for 
toleration, he gives it ; desiring charity, he practises it. He 
does not say rash things, to show how much he can dare ; he 
does not withhold true things under stress of fear. His doc- 
trine is from God ; and while he does not ignore the disclosures 
of science, nor scorn the philosophies of men, he is more careful 
to bring his views into accord with the divine testimony than 
with human theory. Theories may change, and have changed. 
New combinations of the reasoning mind, and new discoveries 
of fact, may show defects in the science. This has often hap- 
pened, and will again. But miracles, and prophecies, and his- 
tories, and arguments, all show that the revelation is unerring 
and immutable. 

Of course, all vain literary ambitions are nipped in the bud 
and slain at the root. He has too sincere and exact a love of 
truth, to festoon it with flowers of poetry, simply for the sake 
of ornament ; he has too large a confidence in the energy of 
Scriptural argument to suppose that it needs the accessories 
of art ; he has too much knowledge of men to suppose that 
they can be won by rhetorical fancies, when they are not won 
by evidence and by truth. He may have illustration, as well 
as fact and argument ; figures of speech, as well as figures of 
logic ; natural beauties of style, such as every man of aesthetic 
culture and large education is likely to use. But there is no 
foamy crest upon the billows, unless there are rolling tides of 
evidence, argument, emotion, below. He is careful to free 
himself from affectation and cant. If a man of sense, he is 
contented to appear as he is. He does not go into spasms in 
order to appear great. He is not the mimic of a master, nor 
the echo of an illustrious voice. He is true to nature, and 
relies upon the power which truth imparts, and not upon the 
surprise which eccentricities awaken. A fervent sincerity, a 



344 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 






clear intellectuality, a love of exact statement characterize him. 
He communicates great thoughts in simple words. He does 
not kindle pyrotechnics, when he can walk by sunshine. He 
does not manufacture thunder by rattling over a bridge, when 
God has made a storm. If great events of history, and great 
discoveries of science, and great conclusions of philosophy, 
are to be presented, he deems it better to let them stand in 
their own clear light, and not to daub them with paint. 

Fantastic writers and speakers may have their hour, but it 
is the hour of the fire-fly, the drowsy, twilight hour, when 
neither sun, nor star, nor moon appears. These unnatural, 
eccentric speakers may gain repute as geniuses for a time, but 
they are set down as men of weakness in the next age. Men 
of true power, like Jonathan Edwards, as a thinker, do not 
tear a passion to tatters, nor flaunt their thoughts before the 
eyes of men, like a navy banner in a gale of wind. The man 
of power does not set himself up as an oracle, and say, " Mine 
are the only thoughts, and wisdom will die with me." He 
does not clothe his ideas in studious language of the meta- 
physics, and then, because people do not understand his mys- 
tical words, exclaim, in the contemptuous phrase of Dr. 
Johnson, " Sir, I am not bound to find you in brains." There 
are those who imagine that quaint expressions and facile imi- 
tations are signs of power. The energy to move men comes 
not after this method. An intellect that firmly grasps its sub- 
ject, a range of thought wide and free, suggesting more than 
it utters, belong to the man of power. His lips speak as con- 
viction and emotion prompt ; his tones come from the heart ; 
his imagination subordinates nature to its uses, not by hunting 
after prettinesses, but by boldly seizing analogies. His knowl- 
edge is exact; his logic is coherent; his style is transparent. 
His purpose is to construct, not demolish, and thus he goes 
forth to his great work of unfolding truth and commending it 
to the acceptance of men. 

In total opposition to this calm power, we sometimes wit- 
ness the spasms of the fanatic. We meet now and then a 
man who is possessed with a fallacy, as the ancients were with 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 345 

demons. All men see that he is ruled by a falsehood, but no 
one can convince him that he is wrong. To himself he is a 
god. He soars into the stars, and feels it not when he meets 
an Icarian fall. He thrusts his insane crotchets into men's 
face and eyes, and thinks that he is strong. He is an Indian 
brave, and his blood-stained tomahawk is more than all the 
ordnance of consummate science. He is a Hindoo fakir, and 
his shrivelled arm, held aloft, is better than a thousand flexible 
limbs, through which the healthy blood is pouring. He is an 
infidel fanatic, and no grandeur of God's infallible Word, 
authenticated by miracles and by power; no wisdom of in- 
structed minds, combining and applying the researches of the 
past ; no virtues of the regenerate Christian, symmetrical and 
beautiful as a firmament of stars, — can equal his supposed in- 
spiration. He is possessed of a master-passion, born of earthly 
heats ; he is a sublime demoniac ; he suffers, and is glad ; he 
spends his life in the support of heresies and eccentricities, 
and rejoices ; he shocks the common sense and common reason 
of the race, and still he rejoices ; he dies, his fanatic folly 
driving him to the verge, and still he denominates himself 
victor. Such is not the power of the true preacher. 

Finally. The preacher who has power is characterized by 
an unfaltering loyalty to truth. Everything depends on the 
ruling motive which guides the character and determines the 
aim. It is of vast importance, also, that a right direction 
should early be given to the energies of the mind. One youth 
becomes swallowed up in a self-seeking ambition, and he 
develops to the world as a man of mighty talent, but only as 
a conquering hero, like Napoleon. «One trains himself for 
parliamentary supremacy ; all studies and all recreations bow 
to that aim, and he becomes a William Pitt. One is eager for 
wealth; the world has little interest to him, except as a piece 
of financial machinery, and he is a Stephen Girard. One is 
bent on legal reforms ; with acutest intellect and comprehen- 
sive study, he sifts the just and the rational out of the mass 
of jurisprudence ; he exalts the whole practical administra- 
tion of the land, and he is a Samuel Romilly. Another aims 
23 






346 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

directly at the moral elevation of the race, and this is the 
highest aim of all. It matters little by what methods he 
works, — whether by books, or institutions, or speeches ; 
whether in the parliament, or in the school, or in the market- 
place, or in the pulpit, — he is the man of power. Let this 
spiritual aim be adopted in early life, let it be pursued 
with unfaltering steadfastness, and it will lead to eminent 
usefulness. 

The true minister, guided by faith, has confidence in the 
ultimate victories of right. In the flux and reflux of 
opinions, in the ebb and flow of revolutions, whatever 
else may change, he is sure that rectitude changes not ; and 
though a thousand defeats may be set down on the side of 
truth, yet the eyes of men are blind, and they do not see 
future results. The truth of God must finally succeed, no 
matter how slow its triumphs nor how long its conflicts. 
God is omnipotent and sovereign, and He has the leisure of 
eternity to work in. He exercises a constant sway in the 
world of mind as in the world of matter. He appoints estab- 
lished laws in both realms. He uses fore-ordained means, 
adapting them to their purpose, and making all conflicting 
counsels and agencies bow before them. The simple, uniform 
means which He uses is His revealed truth, presented by the 
living voice and sustained by a holy example. There is no 
contingency here, nor doubtfulness, any more than in the roll- 
ing of the planets, or the vegetation of the spring. We find 
perturbations and disorders in the system of the stars; we 
find our expectations often disappointed in the growth of the 
plant. But God's laws are not annulled, nor His purposes de- 
feated. There is more complication, intricacy, perplexity in 
the workings of free-will. It is difficult for us to trace all 
relations of cause and effect, and the movements of various 
agencies in the formation of character and in the history of 
man. But God's omniscience looks through all ; God's provi- 
dence is over all; God's legislation surrounds, pervades, con- 
trols all, and His designs are no more to be defeated in the 
moral than in the physical kingdom. The law, if you look at 






SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 347 

it abstractly, is complete, comprehensive, immutable. But it 
is not to be regarded abstractly, whether in the growth of the 
flower or the circuit of the sun, in the changes of an empire 
or the salvation of a soul. Its home is the bosom of God ; its 
inflexibility is the will of God; its results are the voice of 
God. It has no independent existence, but it is simply the 
expression of the divine and never-ending Sovereignty. No 
hidden chances or fortuitous influences can ever overthrow its 
power or counteract its agency. The forces of the universe 
work for it ; the devices of the wicked, by unknown processes, 
help it ; principalities and powers, theories and systems, con- 
flicting and agreeing wills, in heaven and on earth, are subor- 
dinate to it. The believing preacher, therefore, has confidence 
in God's truth, and this sustains his heart under discourage- 
ment, and arouses his mind to intense action. He does not 
allow himself to be idle ; he does not allow himself to despair ; 
he does not allow himself to dogmatize. 

It results from this loyalty to truth, that he is willing to 
wait for the triumph of his principles, and for the vindication 
of his name. Error must die, for it has multiform voices, and 
all discordant ; it has various aspects, and all inconsistent with 
each other; and in the clash and the war of its antagonistic 
forces, it tends ever to destroy itself. But the truth of God 
agrees with the constitution of nature and the deductions of 
science. Its guardian and strong defender is God. It is im- 
perishable and invulnerable. Therefore, the advocate of this 
truth is serene and hopeful, not agitated, nor angry, nor de- 
spondent. He has faith in the Divine promise; he has faith 
in the principles of right, and in the working of eternal laws. 
The minds of men may be driven with fluctuations and uncer- 
tainties; the world of opinion may be tossed with surgings 
and tumults ; yet he abides calmly and unfalteringly by his 
convictions, resting his hope upon the Word of God, and pur- 
suing his researches with ever-fresh ardor of study. 

He is not specially anxious for immediate results. He can 
wait. He has no feverish longing for ephemeral notoriety. 
He has no love for crude theories, and for undigested, uncon- 



348 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

secutive conclusions. He is not over-hasty in putting forth 
his pronunciamento. He desires to grasp a subject before he 
expounds it. He desires to subject his opinions to the tests of 
reason and of time, before he professes to comprehend a code 
or to develop a system. He has a patient temper of mind. 
He knows that "time is short, but art is long." Favorable 
circumstances of life may help him to accomplish his aims, or 
unfavorable circumstances may hinder him, but no hindrance 
can permanently disturb the quiet progress of his researches. 
He has a thirst for knowledge, which no fatigue can overcome, 
nor labors tire. He has a determinate end in view, and he 
pursues it, constant as the days. Life may yield, but not the 
purpose to which his life has been consecrated. There is a 
stern, yet delightful necessity laid upon him to do his utmost ; 
a necessity growing out of his rational nature, his religious 
responsibilities, and his immortal hopes ; a necessity more 
urgent than all illicit temptations, stronger than time, or 
change, or death. He paints, not for to-morrow, but for eter- 
nity. Nothing can turn him aside, as he pursues steadily — to 
the eye of some slowly, but steadily — his onward way. He 
maintains the balance and equipoise of his faculties. He 
works on in tranquil silence. When he speaks, it is not with 
vanity and egotism. Yet he has confidence in the truth, not 
because he has reached it by the action of his own mind, not 
so much because, weighing past opinions, and following the 
laws of legitimate reasoning, he has found it accordant with 
science, as because he has found it in the just and harmonized 
interpretation of the Book of God. 

He gives himself to persevering, systematic reflection. His 
opinions are the natural growth of a healthy and earnest mind. 
He follows the law of development which God has appointed 
for the progressive, scholarly, spiritual preacher. He adopts 
the method of discipline and of culture by which the benefac- 
tors of the world have built up their fame and won their 
great reward. And thus it happens that the true preacher, 
seeking to guide the general opinion and to form the general 
character, feels that he has undertaken a high and even fear- 



SOURCES OF PULPIT POWER. 349 

ful task. He is overwhelmed sometimes by the greatness of 
his responsibility ; he is conscious of his inadequacy ; he 
sinks in faintness when he measures himself by the standard 
of the Gospel and by the attainments of holy men. But you 
cannot take from him his confidence in the revealed will of 
God. As he lies, faint and weary, on the bosom of Truth, the 
gentle, divine mother of his soul's strength, he is refreshed, 
and he springs up again, with the energies of a giant, and re- 
news battle with error and sin. God gives to him strength 
according to his day. God gives to him victory over spiritual 
foes, and his final reward is sure. 



CHARLES SUMNER. 



[This biographical sermon was first delivered in the John-street Church, 
Lowell, March 22, 1874. It was repeated shortly after before the Franklin Liter- 
ary Association .of the same city. It excited universal interest, and the desire was 
wide-spread among those who heard it, that it should be printed. On page 173 of 
the Sketch is inserted a friendly correspondence relative to a passage in the orig- 
inal discourse on Mr. Sumner's rupture with the Eepublican party. That passage 
is omitted here in accordance with Dr. Foster's intention when he originally pre- 
pared the manuscript for publication. Yet it may be said that it was a passage 
which, while blaming Sumner for his relations to Grant's administration, treated 
him with the utmost fairness, and attributed to him the most conscientious mo- 
tives. This discourse will fairly serve as a specimen of many others of a com- 
mingled biographical and political nature. Dr. Foster never allowed the death of 
great public men to pass by, without seizing the occasion to draw lessons of relig- 
ion, of character, and of statesmanship, from their lives. In accordance with this 
practice, he prepared elaborate discourses on Webster, Chief-justice Chase, Lin- 
coln, Washington, and others.] 

2 Sam. 3 : 38. — " Enow ye not that there is a prince and a great man 
fallen this day in Israel f " 

The great statesman of America has been laid to his last 
long rest. One of the last words he spoke was, "I am very 
tired ; I need rest." He has found it. His life was a fearful 
conflict. His brain was driven to its highest tension, for long 
years. He was crushed down by the fierce blows of a bludgeon 
in the hands of a giant. He was under the pressure of the 
most intense political agitations that have ever shaken our 
nation. He was subjected often to bitter censure, and even 
denunciation. He had, more than any other man, the leader- 
ship of the hosts of freedom in the civil war, — an anxious, 
a fearful responsibility. He has died prematurely, under the 
mighty, unparalleled pressure upon nerve and brain. Hence- 
forth, through all the ages, in all lands, where liberty is 



CHAKLES SUMNER. 351 

cherished, his name and fame are secure. I propose to con- 
sider some of his great qualities. 

I, Charles Sumner was a man of unimpeachable integrity. 
His convictions of right were to him emotions, as vivid and 
controlling over his course, as the love of pleasure to the fash- 
ionable, or the love of beauty to the refined, or the love of 
learning to the scholarly, or the love of friends to the ten- 
der-hearted. He followed his convictions of duty through 
darkness and storm, as well as through the sunshine ; through 
obloquy and evil report, as well as praise. No mariner, caught 
in the ragings of the tempest, surrounded by fogs, near to the 
rocks, driven by whirlwinds, menaced by crashing thunders, 
in danger of deadly collision, ever watched for the tremblings 
of the compass more constantly, more eagerly, than Sumner 
watched for the Higher Law, which reason suggests, which 
God appoints. He was a man of sensitive conscience, indefat- 
igable in his search after truth, loyal in devotion to right. 
I do not say that his conclusions were always in absolute 
accord with the right ; other men, wise and good, might differ 
from him. But I do say, that he sought to know the right as 
earnestly as any man living, and he followed his convictions of 
right as bravely and unselfishly as any man who has trod this 
western continent. 

He consecrated himself to the welfare of an injured race. 
He stood for the great foundation principles of republicanism. 
He was the champion of law, and justice, and equal rights. 
He was the friend of human progress. He stood in the path- 
way of great pecuniary interests, and blocked their advance ; 
but he held this to be an immutable truth, that pecuniary 
advantages can never be made to crowd aside the principles 
of equity. Material interests can never be allowed, for a mo- 
ment, to conflict with moral and intellectual culture. Culti- 
vate mercy and love, cherish justice and fraternity, though the 
heavens fall. What shall it profit to gain the world and lose 
the soul ? What shall it profit to establish tariffs, and organize 
banks, and build up commerce, and start the play of a million 
shuttles, and cover your fields with golden corn, and dwell in 



352 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

houses of luxury and elegance, if you wound the great princi- 
ples of humanity ? It is a vain policy, to do evil that good 
may come. It is blind statesmanship, to fortify and perpetuate 
a wrong, that you may build a republic. If you incorporate 
into the state rules offensive to God and antagonistic to right, 
you are providing for future disruption, and calamity, and 
agony ; you are weaving into the fabric rotten timbers, de- 
formed proportions, hay, wood, and stubble, to be cast down 
with an utter overthrow in the collision of storms, to be burned 
up with a total consumption in the time of conflagration. 
These were to him axioms of civil government. He could not 
tolerate an injustice, nor keep silence in its presence ; but with 
indignation and vehemence and persistency, with evidence 
upon evidence and appeal upon appeal, with largest resources 
of learning, with linked and welded argument, with vivid 
kindlings of the imagination, with sensibilities of the heart, 
sometimes so deep as to impede the utterance of his words, 
with all the marshaled forces of deep thought and overpow- 
ering eloquence, he drove straight for his mark. 

The ordinary politician has a thousand temptations to turn 
him aside from the right line of integrity. His occupations 
are engrossing and urgent, and unless he is rigid in his rules 
of study, he will not have time for the investigation of abstract 
principles. He has many constituents, of many minds, and it 
is often impossible to harmonize their views ; and the easiest 
method of action is, to balance them together, and offset them 
against each other, and choose the rule of expediency, instead 
of the rule of right. Opinions are antagonistic ; interests are 
in conflict ; sectionalisms rage ; popular forces stand in hostile 
array; partisan plottings are put in the place of God's law; 
and the temptation is one of mighty stress, — Seek some com- 
promise, yield a portion of admitted right in many directions, 
and bring out, as the end of your statesmanship, a resultant 
of forces, moving adroitly between the beautiful and the de- 
formed, between the just and the unjust. Mr. Sumner was 
not a compromiser nor a trimmer. If the ball took the wrong 
direction, he stood in front of it to stop it. He was not con- 



CHARLES SUMNER. 353 

tent to give it an oblique movement or a retarded movement ; 
let it move right, or not move at all. 

II. Mr. Sumner was a scholar, large in information, rich in 
thought. He was a profound thinker, always a lover of books, 
always a hard student, searching into the reason of things, 
eager to improve his hours, eager to increase his knowledge. 
We need to be admonished of the lessons which such a life 
affords. It is labor which conquers all things ; it is severe 
application which paves the way to greatness. "Genius," 
says an eloquent writer, " is the disposition to study, and the 
power to study." Mr. Sumner had this sort of genius. You 
could not destroy his relish for work ; you could not lessen his 
intense and unquenchable thirst for knowledge. If he was 
wearied with one prolonged and .perplexing train of thought, 
he would turn to another, and find refreshment. In the entan- 
glements and the conflicts of law, the cobwebs were cleared 
out of his mind by the classics. If he was overtasked and 
borne down by political wranglings, he consoled himself with 
history. Addison, Bacon, Burke, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, 
and Milton lifted him up out of the confusion and the de- 
spondency of antagonistic opinions, out of the passion. and the 
storm of debate. The last book that Salmon P. Chase ever 
read was Bennet Tyler's sermons. The last books that Rufns 
Choate ever read (they were chosen for his mental recreation 
on his last interrupted journey to England) were Prof. 
Tayler Lewis's exposition of Genesis, Jeremy Taylor's Ser- 
mons, Wordsworth's Excursion, and Paradise Lost. The last 
passage of poetry which Sumner ever read, and I presume the 
last passage of any book (it was on Monday evening, and he 
died Wednesday afternoon), was that magnificent sonnet of 
Milton, in which he describes the persecution of the Walden- 
ses, and God's providential care and righteous judgments in 
vindicating His own administration. In the calm walks of 
literature, in the deep essays of the ethical reasoner, in the 
imaginative flights of the poet, Mr. Sumner found perennial 
delight. He would turn away, for a whole twenty-four hours 
together, even in the period of absorbing congressional work, 



354 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

leaving his jurisprudence, his legislative precedents, and his 
constitutional discussion, to study out a Biblical discrepancy, 
or a theological difficulty, for a little child. Like Burke, and 
Gladstone, and Derby, of England, like Guizot of France, his 
original bent, strong and decisive, was towards literature ; and 
when statesmanship claimed his service, then his vast and 
beautiful scholarship became one of the unfailing sources of 
his fertility and power. From his first speech in the Senate 
to the last, he never failed to draw from all the histories of 
the world, and from the standard literature of all nations, argu- 
mentative, illustrative, awakening, persuasive forms of thought. 
I have studied his speeches with special reference to this point, 
and I have no doubt that he is unsurpassed by any orator of 
the world, legislative or legal, literary or sacred, in the gath- 
ered riches of all learning. Henry Ward Beecher has more 
spontaneous illustration, drawn from the simple and varied 
forms of nature around him. Thomas Guthrie has more won- 
derful similitudes, growing out of the sublime and the terrible 
in earth, and air, and sky. Jeremy Taylor has an imagination 
which disports itself in all eccentric forms, more inexhaustibly. 
Rufus Choate will prolong a metaphor, and play upon its tune- 
ful changes, with more of oriental luxuriance. Edmund Burke 
abounded in similitudes, but he was more lawless, and some- 
times more coarse, in his figures of speech. And yet I believe 
that not one of these men is so thoroughly versed in various 
literatures, so fertile in the use of biographies and histories, 
so rich in analogies and in strokes of chaste and unexpected 
fancy, as Sumner. The historian, like Hallam or Macaulay 
or Motley, may surpass him in his own specialty. But take 
an argument on a given subject, 'for a given end, and in the 
exhaustive treatment of "it, Mr. Sumner has an unexampled 
faculty of learned, analogical, and instructive illustration. His 
works, when they are completed, as they are likely to be, in 
twelve or fifteen octavo volumes, will prove an inexhaustible 
thesaurus of philosophical principles, of beauties of the imag- 
ination, of felicities of style, of powerful argument. 

It has been said by some that Mr, Sumner was not a prac- 



CHARLES SUMNER. 355 

tical man. Says a leading newspaper of the country, "Mr. 
Sumner was a gentleman, a scholar, and an orator, but not a 
practical man." The conviction of these men is that philoso- 
phy, learning, argument, and eloquence have little to do with 
actual administration. I conclude we have all read the history 
of nations with a different eye and with different inferences. 
In every age, and in every free province, the great orator has 
sown the seeds of thought, and kindled in the popular heart 
the love of right, and planted Liberty's fruit-bearing tree. 
Where would have been our Republic, when the great hour 
of '76 had struck, if we had not had men like James Otis and 
John Adams and Patrick Henry? Yet they were not prac- 
tical men. Edward Burke and Lord Chatham, when they 
faced the hostile Parliament of Great Britain, pleading for 
American rights, were denounced as unpractical. Pity that 
they had not had a little more common-sense, like Lord North 
and George Grenville ! Pity that when Russell, Sydney, 
Vane, and Eliot, pleaded for liberty, in tones of exalted elo- 
quence, and in a spirit of entire self-forgetfulness, dying the 
martyr's death in attestation of their sincerity, that they had 
not a little more practical talent ! No ; w T hen we denounce the 
great parliamentary and popular orator, whose life is an evi- 
dence of devotion to right, whose inspiration is the spirit of 
freedom, who is ready to face deadly peril that he may pro- 
mote his country's welfare, and when we seek to stigmatize 
him as a dreamy idealist, lacking practical ability, we forget 
the whole philosophy of mind and all the lessons of history. 
Great enterprises of pith and moment have always been born 
in the student's brain. The profound thinker, meditating and 
elaborating in the seclusion of the closet, rilling his intellect 
with the great discoveries of truth, rousing his soul with the 
sublime principles of freedom, until heart and brain are on fire 
with the grandeur of his conceptions, has then come forth into 
the popular assembly, and kindled a flame which will emanci- 
pate many republics and illuminate many nations. Schemes 
of benevolence, reforms of government, elevation of morals, 



356 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

have always been indebted, and immeasurably indebted, to the 
studious scholar and the profound thinker. 

For the first ten years of his senatorial life, Mr. Sumner was 
in a feeble minority in Congress ; and not a bill, nor amend- 
ment to a bill, nor proposition of any kind which he brought 
forward, could meet with favor. For the next thirteen years 
of his parliamentary life, his mind was as fertile in practical 
measures as that of any other senator. But, after all, the very 
height and glory of his practical power, was in his scholarly, 
judicial, philosophical influence. He cast down a gigantic sys- 
tem of wrong. He stirred the nation from the northernmost 
corner of Maine to the southernmost point of Texas. He was 
the first to stand on Mason's and Dixon's line, and show to the 
world, beyond a doubt or a dispute, that there was a North. 
He was the first to meet those skilful politicians and diploma- 
tists of the South, and to match them, argument for argument, 
fact for counter-fact, philosophy for philosophy, history for his- 
tory, sage prophecy for wild prediction; — to match them, did 
I say ? to overthrow their argument, their history, their phi- 
losophy, their prophecy, with an utter discomfiture. He was 
the first to show to those plotting and wily men that no bribes 
nor flattery, no social seduction nor worldly blandishment, no 
threat nor terror nor martyrdom, could move him from the 
defence of great moral truths, from the assertion of immutable 
human rights. I admit all that Garrison did before him ; I 
admit all that Seward, and Chase, and Wilson, and Hale, ac- 
complished by his side ; I admit the fidelity of many patriots, 
and many churches, and many secular and religious journals, 
in the defence of human rights ; I acknowledge, with grat- 
itude, the work of Lincoln and his coadjutors ; and yet I 
believe the whole work of emancipation would have failed, 
without Charles Sumner. God, in His providence, gave him 
a post, a spirit, a learning, a logic, and a power, unlike any 
other man. And in the political sphere, he was a leader of the 
antislavery host, and a controller of the national destinies, as 
much as William the Silent ruled the destinies of Holland, or 



CHARLES SUMNER. 357 

Coligny the Huguenots of France, or Wilberforce the aboli- 
tion of the slave-trade in England, or Robert Peel the aboli- 
tion of the Corn Laws. Charles Sumner led on the revolution 
which crushed slavery out of life ; and if that is not practical 
power, as opposed to mere theory and to maundering specula- 
tion, then tell me what practical power is. 

III. Mr. Sumner was an accomplished jurist. The great 
rules of constitutional law, as expounded by Story, Kent, 
Marshall, by Mansfield, Blackstone, Stowell, held him, as the 
romantic story holds the eager child. He had no larger nor 
deeper joy. When in Europe he sat at the feet of Pardessus, 
Degerando, and Foelix, illustrious jurists of France; of Mit- 
termaier, Savigny, and Ranke, in Germany ; of Parkes, Rolfe, 
Follett, and Denman, great lawyers of England. He edited 
twenty volumes of Vesey's Reports, three volumes of Story's 
Decisions, Dunlap's work on Admiralty Practice, largely add- 
ing, by note, commentary, and essay of his own, to the value 
of those books. He lectured for years before the law studenis 
of Harvard, standing, in their absence, in the place of Green- 
leaf and Story, and giving no opportunity to the young men 
to feel any sense of loss. Judge Story declared, in the last 
days of his life, " that he should die content, if he could leave 
his professorship in the hands of Mr. Sumner." God had 
chosen the bold and devoted lover of freedom, the master of 
moral philosophy and of legal politics, for a higher and more 
difficult service than that of a college professorship ; otherwise 
that had been his probable destiny. 

He also attained to a mastery of international law, to a 
knowledge of the intricacies of foreign diplomacy, to a dis- 
cernment of the bearing of moral principles upon the great 
events which are transpiring in the intercourse of nations, 
which made him an authority in the judicial tribunals and the 
royal cabinets of the civilized world. His speeches on the 
Trent case and on the Alabama case startled the whole of 
England, and some of his propositions were vehemently com- 
bated by parliamentary orators, partly because they saw there 
was no foothold for themselves, if they admitted his whole 



358 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

case; partly because his argument had such power, that, if not 
weakened, it would carry the verdict of the world. For a 
time, Mr. Sumner's speech on the Alabama question seemed 
greatly to increase the probabilities of war. But no intelli- 
gent person, now looking back, can doubt that he saw more 
deeply into the complication of events than most; that he 
saw not only the rule of justice, but the play of motives, in 
international relations ; and that he paved the way, in a re- 
markable degree, for the final adjustment, by which we secured 
exemplary damages for the wrong of Laird and his Birken- 
headers, for the injuries committed by Semmes and his crew. 

Mr. Sumner has done a work for the world. It is obvious 
that, great as his influence has been in the Congress of the 
United States, to establish principles, to mold legislation ; 
great as his power has been in the country, to exalt public 
sentiment, to vindicate laws of liberty, to rally the intelligence 
and the virtue of the land to the support of emancipation ; 
great as his accomplishment has been, in giving hope, courage, 
and high aims to the freedmen, he has propagated views, of 
no less importance, for the harmony of other civilized nations, — 
for the diffusion and maintenance of universal peace. His 
senatorial career has been so useful and brilliant, that there is 
no parliamentary assembly of the world that can afford to be 
ignorant of his orations. There is no writer on law, there is 
no advocate of justice in the world, who would not be wider 
in his information, and stronger in his arguments, from a 
knowledge of Mr. Sumner's books. Those books may not 
have all the aphoristic condensation and wealth belonging to 
the writings of Lord Bacon. It is not easy, in the argument 
of particular legislation, taking cases as they spring up in the 
administration of government, to be as sententious, and as 
fertile in universal truths, as Bacon and Grotius and Black- 
stone, in their more general discussions. Still we believe that 
Sumner's writings will far outlive the speeches of Clay and 
Calhoun ; will stand, side by side, in the study of future 
scholars and the esteem of future statesmen, with the great 
constitutional arguments of Webster; with the great judicial 



CHAELES SUMNER. 359 

decisions of Story ; with the philosophical discussions of Burke ; 
with the startling appeals, in behalf of freedom, which fell, at 
long intervals, from Fox, Erskine, Mackintosh, Brougham, 
Romilly, Gladstone, and Bright. 

IV. Mr. Sumner has been an eminent popular teacher. 
The first twenty years of his life were given to the culture 
and development of his intellect, so that at the age of twenty- 
two he was widely known and marked, as of peculiar and 
brilliant promise. He was the favorite pupil of Judge Story, 
and his standing was high, not only in the books, but in the 
love and esteem of all the Harvard faculty. He went to 
Europe when twenty-six years of age, and his letters of intro- 
duction, from the best men here, carried him at once into the 
most accomplished society there. And there, with jurists, ad- 
vocates, and historians, with poets and statesmen, with men of 
science and men of large celebrity, he moved as an equal and a 
peer, commanding their approval, awakening their expectation, 
gathering from their richest stores of thought. Mr. Sumner 
has said, within the last few months, that, in his view, conver- 
sation with eminent men was the most improving of all forms 
of culture. His experience in England was doubtless the 
foundation of that remark. He came back from that Euro- 
pean tour, after four years' stay, with knowledge, finish, 
and power shining forth from his life and his addresses, as the 
sun from the summer sky. From that hour, and for the next 
ten years of his life, he became a popular teacher, placing 
great truths before the people, with clear, convincing argu- 
ment, with winning and sometimes overpowering eloquence. 
Richard Cobden said of one of his orations that it was "the 
noblest contribution ever made, by a modern writer, to the 
cause of peace." 

We hear a good deal said, in these times, about the power 
of the lecture as an instructor of the people. The pulpit, the 
press, the school, the family, the social circle, the lecture, 
divide the suffrages of men. Beyond a question, the lecture 
occupies a place, in these latter years, which it never did 
before^. The lecturer is a man, or a woman, accomplished in 



360 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

many sciences, and many arts, and many rhetorics. The 
lecturer is sometimes a blunderbuss, and sometimes a full- 
sized Paixhan gun, charged to the brim. Five or six orations, 
prepared with great elaboration, presented with oratorical 
skill, will last a year, sometimes five or six years. I offer no 
disparagement of the lecture, or of this system of instruction. 
It is an attractive, an impressive, and a powerful means of 
good. In the hands of such a man as Sumner, it is, without 
qualification, a most persuasive and useful agency of instruc- 
tion. He uttered no nonsense, nor clap-trap, nor frivolity, nor 
feebleness. He left every audience imbued, I might say 
inspired, with solemn thought for meditation, with noble 
examples for imitation, with high resolves for action. He 
spoke to the populace of Boston on the Grandeur of Nations ; 
to the students of Harvard on the admirable virtues of Story, 
Channing, Pickering, and Allston ; to the young men of 
Amherst on Glory and Fame ; to the alumni of Union College 
on the Law of Human Progress ; to the courts of Boston on the 
True Rules of Education in the Schools ; to assemblies, here 
and there, on the Evils of War and the Obligations of Peace. 
And in those times of political agitation, he began to show, in 
different gatherings and conventions, his intense love of free- 
dom, and his surpassing power of argument for Republican 
rights. He had the form, the face, the eye, the voice, and the 
movement of an orator. He held vast crowds by the hour, 
by the two hours, willing to stay, eager to hear, drinking in 
his weighty thoughts, his consecutive trains of thought, even 
to the very edge and climax of the peroration. His instruc- 
tions were full of light, warmth, beauty, and impressiveness. 
I doubt whether John B. Gough, with his dramatic genius ; 
or Henry Ward Beecher, with his descriptive skill ; or Anna 
Dickinson, with her caustic wit ; or Wendell Phillips, with his 
extraordinary strokes of eloquence ; or Daniel Webster, with 
his philosophy of politics; or Tyndall, with his science; or 
Froude, with his history, — has ever equalled, in the full 
combination of instruction, pathos, imagination, power, the 
lectures of Sumner. It was the exhibition of foundation 



CHARLES SUMNER. 361 

principles, in their clear unfolding and true application. It 
was character, virtue, conduct, and life, vivid and beautiful as 
the colors of the rose or the tints of the morning. It was 
didactic instruction, given with deep and honest emotion. It 
was given with varied examples, and with interesting and 
arresting illustration. It was made accordant with reason and 
with fact ; it was sustained by evidence ; it was accompanied 
all the way with a sense of rhetorical finish and of moral 
insight, and with that inward and deep satisfaction which 
results when the soul is fed with immutable truth. Thus, 
until he was forty years of age, Mr. Sumner labored as a 
popular teacher, not standing, in the eye of the world, so 
prominent as afterwards, but enlightening thousands of minds, 
and drawing to himself thousands of hearts. 

V. Mr. Sumner was a self-sacrificing hero and martyr. He 
was forty years of age when he entered the Senate. His tastes 
did not incline him to public life. He was more fond of the 
studies of the college, of the retirement of the library, of the 
meditations of the closet, of the conversation of literary men, 
than he was of the eager competition, the turmoil, and the 
strife of politics. It was a sense of duty to the slave which 
forced him into the notice of the nation. It was the con- 
viction that Freedom was in peril, and that the defence of 
liberty was to be maintained by the legislator at Washington, 
that compelled him to stand for the office of Senator. There 
was the practical, governmental responsibility; there the 
actual, moving power ; there the great argument was to be 
rehearsed ; there were the men who held the slave, and by 
whom the great questions of liberty and of humanity were to 
be decided. Could he move them by truth, and evidence, and 
persuasive appeal, to favor emancipation? If not, could he 
induce them to yield to majority rule, when Northern opinion 
and legislation should outweigh their own ? According to all 
principles of genuine Republicanism, there was nothing else 
for the slaveholder to do. We are a government of majori- 
ties; if not, we veer inevitably and swiftly towards bloody 
anarchy, or towards remorseless despotism. Mr. Sumner had 
24 



362 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

one other question to answer. Suppose the South should re- 
fuse to yield to majority rule, was he prepared to stand in 
front of their violent opposition, and take the consequences ? 
It was the post of imminent and of infinite peril. He had 
foreseen the difficulties ; he had calculated the dangers. He 
did not desire to meet them, but the call of Freedom, in her 
hour of need, compelled him. He desired to emancipate a 
race from bondage; but still more, he desired to vindicate 
principles of equity on which all human progress is built. He 
desired to snatch the Republic from dishonor ; he desired to 
save a continent from false institutions ; he desired to rescue 
his own race, of English origin, of Norman culture, of Saxon 
energy, the governing race of the world, from the weakness 
which injustice and wrong must entail. He desired to pre- 
serve the independence and the purity of the Colonial Fathers 
and the Revolutionary Heroes, and to hand down their rever- 
ence, energy, tenderness, humanity, integrity, to the coming 
generations. He desired to stand by the truth of God and 
by the laws of rectitude. 

He knew it was a post of difficulty, delicacy, and instant 
danger, and he did not wish for it. If the people claimed him, 
and compelled him, he could not say them nay, for duty was 
higher than privilege, more exacting than scholarship, more 
compulsory than comfort, or pleasure, or happiness, or ease. 
While the canvass was going on, he would not speak a word 
to forward the effort. Austere, silent, and anxious, weighed 
down by an infinite sense of duty and of responsibility, he 
waited the result. For four months the legislature was striv- 
ing to secure an election, and could attend to hardly any other 
business ; for four months the Commonwealth was shaken by 
this agitation, from its mountain line to its sea-coast border, 
from its metropolis to its most distant farms and obscure cot- 
tages ; but Mr. Sumner did not move a finger to secure the 
place. No electioneering occurred by his connivance; no 
spending of money or flattering words; no wire-pulling, no 
button-holing. When he was chosen, and Mr. Dana carried 
him the news, and the papers reported the ringing of bells 



CHARLES SUMNER. 363 

from Boston steeples, and the firing of cannon in Puritan 
Worcester, and joy peals from the Berkshire hills, and jubi- 
lant responses from the Western prairies, — he burst into tears, 
and said to his friend, " I am filled with an inexpressible sad- 
ness, lest I cannot meet your expectations, and vindicate the 
great cause." He did not desire the office, but took it reluc- 
tantly, with a disinterested love of Freedom, and love of Truth, 
and love of Man. In the spirit in which he received the office 
and commenced his great work, I discern the high-toned and 
far-seeing convictions of the self-forgetful hero, I see the con- 
secration and the anointing of the martyr. 

You know — the country has that story by heart — how the 
blows were rained upon him, after his great speech of May 
20, 1856, on the Kansas and Nebraska bill; and how he sank, 
unconscious, his garments bathed in blood, at the feet of Mor- 
gan of New York, who caught him in his arms, and saved him 
from additional bruises. More than twenty blows were poured 
upon his defenceless head, with the calculated momentum and 
the fiercest intensity of a strong six-footer, with a cane of the 
specific gravity of whalebone, and seven eighths of an inch in 
thickness, and by the first one of those blows he was blinded 
and made insensible. Two great gashes were cut in his head 
down to the bone, two inches in length, and one inch under 
the scalp after the instrument of torture reached the bone. 
Nathan Darling, a captain in the army, and accustomed to 
care for wounds, assisted the surgeon to dress Mr. Sumner's 
head. He gave in this testimony, under oath, before the Con- 
gressional Committee : — 

"I examined Mr. Sumner's head, and found two large 
wounds upon it; and a smaller one under his ear. His hands, 
his shoulders, and his back were very much bruised. . . . 
The same licks on an ordinary skull would have smashed 
right through ; they were on the thickest part of the crown. 
If they had been struck, with half the force, on another part 
of the head, they would have killed him instantly. I think 
there is no doubt of this. . . . The left hand had a black 
lump on it, as large as a butternut. The right hand was hurt. 
Both his arms and shoulders were black. There was a cut on 



364 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

his nose ; there was a black streak across both his thighs, made 
in rising from his desk." 

For four years Mr. Sumner was in a state of constant distress 
and exhaustion, the result of these injuries, — unable to take 
his seat in the Senate ; unable to accomplish any study or 
work ; weakened in the spine ; confused by agonizing pains in 
the head ; shaken and enfeebled in the whole nervous system ; 
unable to propel either of his legs, except as he lifted them, 
one after the other, and pushed them forward, as he walked. 
To this picture we need only add the medical treatment of 
Dr. Brown-Sequard. For the sake of counter-irritation, he 
cauterized him, up and down the back, with burning irons, 
causing the greatest suffering that can be inflicted by medical 
practice. For five successive times he burned him, Mr. Sum- 
ner refusing to take chloroform, causing the most intense and 
terrible suffering which Dr. Brown-Sequard "ever had the 
misfortune to inflict upon animal or man." If this is not the 
trial by fire, and the agony of the martyr, not for one short 
convulsion of dying, but for months and years, with a fortitude 
unshaken, with a self-sacrificing determination unrelaxing, the 
ruling motive through all, the love of Freedom and the love 
of man, then I think it would be difficult to define what 
heroism and martyrdom mean. 

VI. What was the source of Mr. Sumner's attainments 
and usefulness? Looking at the accomplishment of great 
men, we cannot avoid the inquiry, What was the fountain of 
their power? Aristides was great; he was great because 
he was just. Alfred was called the Great; it was the 
tenderness of his spirit and the purity of his life that made 
him distinguished. Hampden, Pym, Vane, and Cromwell 
were great ; so were George Washington, James Otis, Joseph 
Warren, Josiah Quincy, Samuel Adams ; but in each case the 
greatness was moral, even more than intellectual ; it was devo- 
tion to a holy cause ; it was total self-abnegation in pursuit 
of that cause. We explore that mighty river, the Amazon, 
which becomes almost a fathomless estuary as it empties into 
the sea, with an intense curiosity following the stream to the 



CHARLES SUMNER. 365 

springs of the hill country. We gaze upon the gorgeous cathe- 
drals of Eome or Milan, upon the costly palaces of the noble- 
men of England, and we are anxious to know the names and 
the history of the builders. If we can reach the origin of 
wonderful works ; the tuition and the discipline by which the 
structure was framed ; the lessons of mother, or grandmother, 
or teacher, or friend, that molded the intellect of the child ; 
the books that formed the principles of the youth ; the scenery 
of Nature ; the tone of society ; the institutions of govern- 
ment ; the regimen of the physical life ; the religious nurture 
that formed the conscience ; the habits of study and action, 
early adopted, which went forward into the noble manhood, — 
we have then found treasures of instruction ; we can hope 
to form another character on the same model ; we can hope 
to build up, out of the children playing by our side, other 
statesmen, patriots, philanthropists, who shall have the power 
and attain the usefulness of our departed benefactor. We 
would train the boys of our households and of our city for a 
noble, a pure, and a just life. We would put before our young 
men the picture of this eminent usefulness and admirable 
virtue, and ask them to emulate it. We would pray to 
almighty God, most holy and most merciful, to raise up other 
like patriots for the service of Freedom and of the Common- 
wealth. 

I have spoken of Mr. Sumner's scholarship; of his moral 
courage ; of his sympathy for the poor ; of his love of free- 
dom; of his stainless integrity; of his perseverance and his 
unconquerable will. These were the moral principles from 
which his greatness sprang, when he had arrived at the age of 
mature understanding, so as to investigate and choose the rules 
of life. It is too soon to comprehend all the forces of rain 
and dew and sunshine that lay around the roots of his 
character in childhood. I wish that we knew more of his 
boyhood ; of the mother who nursed him at her bosom ; of 
the father who counselled him ; of the rules of the house ; of 
the early tastes, and tempers, and studies of the child ; of the 
companions with whom he played; of the ancestral traits 



366 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

which ran in his blood ; of the books which he loved ; of the 
dreams which he dreamed; of the outward influences which 
determined and helped on the inward vent. These things will 
be better known hereafter, for his whole course of early dis- 
cipline will become one of the familiar stories to be told in the 
ears of our children and our youth. It will inspire them with 
ardor in the pursuit of good, and with changeless determina- 
tion in the conquest of evil. We know now that Charles 
Sumner, the boy, did not struggle with poverty, for the rich- 
ness of Boston comforts and the abundance of Boston privi- 
leges were around all his childhood. He did not fall into any 
habits of indolence, or vulgarity, or profligacy. He was 
gently dandled on the knee of love; tenderly watched over 
by the eye of wisdom ; faithfully disciplined in the self-denial 
and the thoughtfulness of the scholar. We see how Philip 
Doddridge was trained by pictures and by Bible stories ; how 
Robert Hall learned to read from the inscriptions on the grave- 
stones, when anxious friends thought it wise to hide from him 
books ; how Walter Scott was nurtured on ballads and histo- 
ries, in the romantic glens of Scotland; how Patrick Henry 
fed his young soul, amid the mountains and woods and broad- 
spreading meadows of Virginia ; and we expect to find, in the 
tuition and history of Charles Sumner, some of these peculiar 
and memorable agencies, working with a power till then 
unknown. 

VII. And lastly, God chooses his own instruments to ac- 
complish his own ends. We should not have expected to find 
the deliverer of ancient Israel in a little feeble,- wailing baby, 
hid in an ark of bulrushes, on the floating waves of the Nile, 
watched over by one small, defenceless maiden ; rescued from 
the dangers of the water, and from beasts of prey, by a troop 
of laughing girls from Pharaoh's court. When General Brad- 
dock, of English fame, was sent out to deliver America from 
the French power, he scorned utterly to receive admonition 
or hint or aid from a young colonial officer, who had brought 
forward, in that crisis of danger, some Virginia troops. The 
Virginia colonel had not been educated in the military schools 



CHARLES SUMNER. 367 

of England ; he had not fought on the fields of European 
fame; he had not been thrilled, through body and soul, by 
personal communion with great warriors and conquerors ; he 
had been a protege of Lord Fairfax in the wilds of Shenan- 
doah, — that was his highest honor ; he had led a small regiment 
of men against marauding Indians, — that was his chief cam- 
paign ; he had been a surveyor in the woods, — that was his ac- 
complished education ; he had been a skirmisher on outposts, — 
what did he know about military science or war's great ex- 
ploits? And so Braddock commanded him to stay in the rear, 
and take care of the baggage ; but yet that humble and unob- 
trusive officer was appointed to save the British honor and the 
British troops on that memorable day, and to save American 
independence and American republicanism on other days. 

In the year 1860 (a dark hour for American liberties), a 
convention of earnest men was held in Chicago, to nominate 
a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, and for 
the leadership of the antislavery hosts. Who should be the 
man ? Some said the great lawyer and ex-governor, Seward, 
from New York ; some said the stalwart, bold, indomitable 
Wade from Ohio, who debated in the Senate with a pistol by 
his side, and of whom even Toombs, and Cobb, and Brooks, 
and Keitt, were afraid ; some said this general or that general, 
this or that skilled administrator, tried in a hundred political 
battles. But the Lord appointed otherwise. By unseen and 
unknown trains of thought, all converging to one point ; by 
evidences, and suggestions, and motives gathered from the 
East and from the West, and so undesignedly as to designate 
the plain finger of Providence, — the flat-boatman of Kentucky, 
the rail-splitter of Illinois, the village lawyer of Springfield, 
Abraham Lincoln by name, was designated to be the saviour 
of the nation. 

Thirty years ago, I began to read, as they were t then pub- 
lished in the newspapers, the literary essays of Charles Sumner. 
They were not frequent in their appearance, but they were of 
marked characteristics and of extraordinary ability. They 
were a joy and a hope to every young scholar. Boys in col- 



368 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

lege, young ministers, lawyers, and physicians, thoughtful mer- 
chants, mechanics, farmers, began to say to one another, Here 
is a man / here is an expounder of principles and an originator 
of thought; here is an ornament of American literature; here 
is a discourser on law, and ethics, and the relations of learning 
to both, who will yet give decisions, from the judicial bench, 
for the world to read. But God had his own work for that 
young and secluded writer to accomplish. No man then imag- 
ined that that pale, shrinking scholar, that that imaginative, 
retiring student of libraries, that that sensitive, meditative, 
philosophical, poetical mind, fleeing from public crowds, and 
delighting only in the studies of the closet, was to be the 
foremost statesman and debater in America ; standing in the 
front of slavery's battle, on the "perilous, deadly ridge " ; a 
mark for all sharp-shooters ; a target for all terrible blows ; 
firm as any covenanter of Scotland, or martyr of the ancient 
church; absolutely impregnable in his argument; absolutely 
unconquerable in his self-sacrificing will ; standing there, beau- 
tiful and strong, with his glittering weapons of truth, till free- 
dom's battle was won ; then dying, with his harness on, to 
receive the praises of all discerning men, and a nation's tears. 
God chooses his own instruments, and fits them for their 
work by his own methods. Let us consecrate ourselves to 
duty, and train our lives for patriotism ; let us seek to place 
before the young higher motives of action and nobler rules of 
integrity ; let us have a firmer trust in God and His provi- 
dence, assured that He will bring forward, at the proper time, 
other Washingtons and Lincolns, other Otises and Quincys, 
other Warrens and Sumners ; that He will lead us out of dark- 
ness into light, out of political dissension and corruption, into 
national peace and probity. 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 



[This sermon illustrates the remarkable grasp which Dr. Foster had of current 
events. If the preceding discourse suggests his ability in the line of biography 
and statesmanship, this gives assurance of success had he chosen to give himself 
to journalism or the writing of history. But what is more to the purpose, it shows 
how a wise and scholarly minister may utilize the contemporaneous life of the 
world, so as to compete with the press in interesting his people, and so as to draw 
religious lessons out of that on which men are thinking, and which to others 
might seem merely secular. This sermon was followed by a second in the after- 
noon, made up of brief biographies of the eminent dead of the year. An out- 
line of this second sermon is given on page 172 of the Biographical Sketch.] 

Ps. 143 :5, 10. "I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Thy 
works; teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God." 

I kegakd the year 1873 as having been one of startling 
admonition and peculiar instructiveness. There are three 
departments of thought, pertaining to it, to which I invite 
your attention : its Histories, its Casualties, its Biographies. 

I. I ask your attention to the events of the year in France. 
It is not easy to understand the situation in that country of 
sudden and inconsistent enthusiasms, of rapid alternations, 
and of bloody conflicts. All may be calm to-day, and in a 
month or a week the whole nation may be surging in the 
tumult of revolution or of war. Napoleon III has ended his 
political life and his natural life, in as deep dishonor as when, 
by treachery and intrigue, he won the throne of France. Of all 
the factions of France, the one which circles around Eugenie 
and her son is the feeblest. After Napoleon fell, Germany 
ruled France for a space ; then the Versailles party, backed by 



370 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

the army ; then the Commune ; then Thiers, as president of 
a provisional government ; and now MacMahon is chosen pres- 
ident for seven years. It seems impossible for parties there to 
crystallize into any unity or fraternity. Six factions at least 
are in their representative assembly : (1) the Bourbons, under 
the lead of Count De Chambord; (2) the Orleanists, under 
Duke D'Aumale ; (3) the Imperialists, with Prince Napoleon 
for their hope ; (4) the moderate Republicans, led by Thiers 
and Favre ; (5) the extreme Republicans, under Gambetta ; 
(6) the Reds, or Communists, whose watchword is Death. 
The least of these parties is the Napoleonists ; the next in 
the minority is the Communists. 

From March 20 to May 24, 1871, the Commune held rule. 
By the destruction of public buildings, of churches, of libra- 
ries, of costly monuments, a most atrocious vandalism, their 
career was marked. A ferocity, a malignity, which knew no 
pity, no justice, no forbearance, nothing but the ravening for 
blood, illustrated those sixty-five days of their rule. Arch- 
bishop Darboy Boujeau, judge of the Court of Cassation, Abbe 
Daugerry, and many other innocent citizens, — some in youth, 
some in white hairs, some in the fulness of their strength, — 
were ranged against a wall, shot down, and mangled, without 
any forms of trial, without any pretences of law. It is because 
all parties are afraid of these reckless, disorganizing murderers 
that they cannot unite upon any abiding constitution or fixed 
principles of Republicanism. There are enough friends of 
liberty to defeat a monarch, and they vote in solid phalanx 
against the Bourbons. There are enough friends of order to 
defeat the Reds, and they vote in solid phalanx against those 
theories which are destructive of property and of life. But 
they cannot coalesce in permanent fellowship. They are con- 
tinually checking and counterplotting and counteracting one 
another ; they lack practical talent ; they lack mutual confi- 
dence ; they lack that self-forgetful and self-sacrificing hero- 
ism which prefers another's good to their own gratification. 

There is one other thing which more than all else they lack, 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 371 

namely, faith. Count Montalembert, one of the most gifted 
men of France, a reverent and spiritually-minded Catholic, says 
of the French nation : "They have wit, they have knowledge, 
they have genius ; but they have not character. Thirty mil- 
lions of people do not know how to hold fast to a moral foun- 
dation. They have lost the political sentiment, both of religion 
and of their rights. Events are to them inconsistent playthings, 
passing clouds, mere spectacles ; the past they have not mas- 
tered; the future has for them no secrets." This is a deplor- 
able state of mind for any nation. You may judge of their 
reverence and their faith in the Christian religion, compared 
with the reverence of the English mind, by a fact which hap- 
pened a few years ago. The governor-general of India 
proposed to restore the gates of a heathen temple; one uni- 
versal cry of indignation saluted him from all England. The 
same year, a son of Louis Philippe laid the corner-stone of a 
mosque, to be rebuilt on foreign soil ; not a breath of remon- 
strance came from any part of France, — it was regarded as a 
very pleasant joke. 

Take another fact. In London it requires only one garrison 
and three small battalions and two squadrons, to keep two 
millions of men in order. Why ? Go into London on Sunday, 
and you will see the cause. The whole population are obe- 
dient to the church-bells. Immense throngs are seen going to 
the house of God. Quiet, stillness, reverence, and home-bred 
delights are everywhere. There is a law of God, above the law 
of bayonets ; there is a police arrangement of the soul, be- 
yond the crash of artillery. London has mighty enterprise, 
but it is obedient to religion. It is the central depot and the 
central disbursing fountain of all commerce. Five divisions 
of the globe disembark there daily their produce. But this 
illimitable business, and these innumerable interests, are all 
hushed, one day in seven, to wait for God's instructions. 

Now, go to Paris on the Sabbath. Two armies, forty thou- 
sand troops of the line and sixty thousand National Guards, 
are patrolling that city to keep it subdued and safe. I take 
the following particulars, as to the keeping of the Sabbath in 



372 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

Paris, from a statement of Rev. Dr. Maxwell, of Cincinnati, 
after his return from travels in France. He says : — 

" I have spent Sabbaths in many of the capitals of Europe, 
and I will describe a Sabbath in Paris. 

" After breakfast, we walked the length of the Rue St. Ho- 
nore, one of the important business streets of Paris. In the 
whole extent of the walk, nothing reminds us that it is the 
Sabbath. Omnibuses, cabs, all public vehicles, seem thicker 
than usual. More people are on the streets than usual, with 
little or no change of dress. Not a shop is shut ; the shop- 
keepers are as busy as ever with their work. Hawkers of 
fruit, vegetables, and notions, with their wares on little hand- 
carts, are vociferating through the streets. Movements of 
troops, with trains of artillery, are taking place. The bazaars, 
butchers' stalls, and drinking-places are all open. Where 
building is going on, no sound of the hammer has ceased. 
Not a sign reminds one that it is the Lord's day. From nine 
o'clock till twelve, there is more or less church-going by the 
women and old people ; but as the service consists mainly of 
a series of masses, by a sort of changing guard in the shops, 
many attend mass once in the forenoon, and the business still 
goes on at home. 

" In the afternoon, business is suspended, the churches are 
deserted, and all out-doors is alive with men, women, and chil- 
dren, seeking pleasure. The current bears us first into the 
gardens of the Tuileries, which are open and full of people. 
From these gardens, the living stream pours on into the ' Place 
Concorde,' and thence into the ' Champs Elysees.' Here a 
stranger would think that some special fair was being cele- 
brated. Cake and fruit stands meet you at every step. All 
manner of games are in progress. Young men are at ball-play, 
running races, practising gymnastic feats. On all these things 
young and old seem as earnestly intent as possible. You would 
think of nothing but our Fourth of July, only you cannot con- 
ceive of the frantic energy with which all Paris precipitates 
itself into outdoor amusements, on Sabbath afternoon. 

" We venture out again in the evening. Fewer people are 
on the streets, for they are now engaged with indoor amuse- 
ments. We pass the circus, an immense building, crowded to 
the top. The coffee-houses and restaurants in the ' Palais 
Royal,' and along the boulevards, are full. About the doors, 
crowds are sitting, sipping their coffee and small glasses of 
brandy. Sabbath evening is the harvest-time for theatres and 
operas in Paris, The ball-rooms are crowded, also. These 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 373 

are a noted feature of the city. We pass by the largest of 
these, and glance in at the door. There seem to be about a 
thousand on the spacious floor, giddy with the glare of light, 
and fumes of wine, and movements of the waltz. These dan- 
cing halls, of which there are many in Paris, all full on Sab- 
bath night, are the very doors of hell." 

Poor, unhappy France ! unbelieving, disorganizing, immoral ; 
departing|from sacred covenants; breaking family ties ; heed- 
less of the Revelation ; holding loosely political guarantees ; 
witty and pleasure-loving ; intellectual and scientific ; with 
bursts of eloquence ; with fascination of manners ; with ver- 
satility of talent; with victorious dashes in war; with proud 
memories of military glory ; with a land of vines and flowers, 
of milk and honey, of riches and beauty, — but fickle and 
false, infidel and scandalous; the judgments of God resting 
upon it ; lacking self-denial ; lacking faith in Christ, and rush- 
ing upon sterner histories and darker days. 

How different the state of mind in this American Republic, 
and what occasion for gratitude have we in this marked and 
memorable difference! Here laws and institutions are cher- 
ished ; here the supremacy of the reason over the appetites is 
maintained ; here duty is higher and nobler than pleasure, and 
legal reverence, public order, the spirit of obedience are main- 
tained. It is the precious legacy of our fathers ; it is the holy 
teaching of the Bible. Here is a veneration for the Constitu- 
tion, which some call idolatry, but which is the chief bulwark 
of our freedom. Violent political discussions, party heats, 
unforeseen agitations, sudden factions, may arise, and their 
influence may seem to be sweeping irresistibly over the land. 
But we have an anchor ; we Jiave settled principles ; we can 
hold to foundations. Still, the congressional statute is law ; 
still, the judicial bench is revered ; still, the executive decision 
of the President and his Cabinet is final, until the legislative 
authority changes the law. We are a government of laws, and 
not of men. With calm convictions that faith in the Bible 
and religious self-control are the only sure basis of financial 
security, of equal rights, and of republican perpetuity, we hold 



374 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

to the old anchors. Thank God that we are likely to hold for 
some decades and centuries longer ! 

II. I turn to the signs of progress in Italy. The steps of 
gradation have been manifest for many years. A constitution 
was given to a portion of Italy in March, 1848, by Charles 
Albert of Piedmont, declaring that in that province there 
should be no disfranchisement for religion. This ordinance was 
ratified, on his accession to the throne, by Victor Emmanuel. 
In 1850, the "Siccardine laws" were passed ; they were intro- 
duced by Count Siccardi, by the advice and counsel of Cavour, 
placing priests on the same footing with other citizens, and 
abolishing ecclesiastical tribunals for the trial of civil causes. 
In 1855, Ratazzi, minister of state, still counseled by Cavour, 
suppressed certain religious communities, giving their income 
to the poor clergy, thus equalizing civil and religious privileges. 
In 1856, Cavour formed an alliance with the Western Powers 
at the Congress of Paris, bringing in new Protestant guaran- 
tees and the Protestant love of freedom. Immediately upon 
this, the war between Austria and Prussia followed, terminat- 
ing in seven weeks, and Italy was liberated from her chains. 
In 1860 came the federation of the Italian states, Cavour and 
Garibaldi leading, and all but Venice and Rome acquiescing. 
In 1861, Venice and Rome were added to the alliance ; the 
states were combined into one united, constitutional kingdom ; 
the first Italian parliament was held, and civil and religious 
freedom for all Italy was proclaimed. The pope's spiritual 
headship was allowed, but he was deprived of his temporal 
authority. In 1870 came the war between France and Prus- 
sia ; it ended by giving a new victory to Protestant principles, 
by the consent of all the foreign powers, even of Austria and 
France and Spain, to the Italian confederation of states. In 
May, 1871, was enacted the law of papal guarantees, asserting 
religious liberty and fixing bounds to papal authority. Relig- 
ious toleration is established ; temporal penalties for spiritual 
offences are abolished ; the right of suffrage and the right of 
holding office are unrestricted ; the freedom of discussion and 
the freedom of worship are granted ; the priest or the layman 






REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 375 

may stand up boldly and defy the Inquisition; in short, relig- 
ious liberty, by the decree of law, is given to Italy as fully as 
to England. It is a great and marvelous gain. 

It is true that the pope and the councils, and the large por- 
tion of the priesthood, violently protest against these changes, 
and assert the claim of temporal sovereignty, and the right to 
use military and civil forces and secular penalties, to compel 
obedience to spiritual edicts. The recent encyclical letters 
of the pope have astonished the world for their arrogant and 
their illimitable claims. The pope has excommunicated Bishop 
Reinkens, one of the Old Catholics of Germany. He has 
placed his prohibition on the works of such an eminent phil- 
anthropist and devout saint as Montalembert. His emissaries 
are busy throughout the whole realm of Italy, intriguing for 
the restoration of the old regime. The messages of the Vati- 
can are cheering on the Monarchists in France. Hyacinthe 
and Dollinger, and others of the reforming party, are in front 
of a subtle foe. Rev. Mr. Pressense* of Paris, says, " Religious 
questions are assuming a prominent place in our home and for- 
eign policy; and crusades against liberty are preached by the 
Romanist clergy, in a ruthless spirit, in religious circulars, in 
episcopal letters, in conversations, and even from the pulpit." 
Disraeli, late premier of England, in his recent Glasgow speech, 
declares his belief that "a great and bloody religious war is 
impending in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, 
England, America ; a war which shall shake the foundations 
of all states, and try the faith of all consecrated souls." 

It may be so. The forces of Gog and of Magog are gathering, 
and forging new weapons of war, and putting on their armor. 
Infidelity was never so bold, so confident, so aggressive, so 
unparalleled in the charms of literature and the defences of 
science. The friends of Christ, in my judgment, are assuming 
a false and dangerous unconcern. They are crying " Peace, 
peace ! liberalism, liberalism ! " They are spreading out the 
mantle of charity over all forms of error ; they are tolerating 
and even praising, and their children are reading, this poi- 
soned literature, where the gall of asps is under the flowers of 



376 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

poetry, and the deadly strychnine mingles with brilliant dis- 
courses of science; they are pushing on the wooden horse, 
which conceals armed men, into the midst of the sacred city. 
The pope has his emissaries, and infidelity has its unconscious 
supporters, not far from our blessed firesides and our sacred 
altars. The Bible question in our schools, the Sunday question 
in its relation to libraries and railroads and machine-shops 
and public sports, the temperance question as involving the 
right of prohibition, are all becoming the battle-ground where 
popery, and infidelity, and worldly ambitions, and irreverent 
defiance, range themselves on the one side, and spiritually- 
minded Christians surely ought to stand on the other. " Sun- 
day laws," says a recent convention of twenty-one German 
societies in Cincinnati, " are in conflict both with the constitu- 
tion of the State and of the United States, and cannot legally 
be enforced." We seem to be going backward in the matter 
of Bible-reading in our schools, forgetting that the Bible was 
the foundation of the State in the beginning ; that all our vir- 
tues are built upon it, and all our liberties ; that it has main- 
tained its unshaken place, by the consent of all parties, as the 
corner-stone of our moral integrity ; and that we cannot cast 
it out of our schools without casting out the faith of the peo- 
ple in its inspiration. The Romanists demand a denomina- 
tional system of schools, and the opportunity of taking their 
own proportion of the tax and using it for their own sectarian 
tenets. Infidelity demands the rejection of the Bible as a 
sign of scorn against all religion. Are we not in imminent 
danger of retrogression? 

The denominational scheme has been tried in Canada, and 
in three provinces of the New Dominion ; it has signally failed 
and been surrendered. In Australia they are adopting the un- 
denominational plan, taxing all, putting all on the same foot- 
ing, and it is found to have admirable results. In Spain and 
Italy, the governments of both countries are taking away 
schools from the church, and putting them into the admin- 
istrative control of the state. Austria herself, after her defeat 
in the seven-weeks' war, saw the defect of her school education, 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 377 

long in the hands of Catholic hierarchies, called together a con- 
gress of two thousand teachers, resolved to adopt the unde- 
nominational plan, giving an equal right of instruction to all 
religions and all classes, casting out special privileges ; and 
already the national mind feels the spring. Switzerland, with 
twenty-five cantons, is made up of commingling races and of 
two prevailing religions ; yet her school system is independent ; 
all children are required to attend the schools, and to yield to 
the same discipline and instruction, without regard to sects ; 
and great thoroughness and practical efficiency attend that 
course. In France they are asking for unsectarian, national 
schools. Their far-seeing statesmen feel that there is little 
chance for national elevation or for a constitutional republic, 
so long as there is an ignorant peasantry without hope in the 
country, and a vast throng of workmen without thought in 
the city; and that by the intellectual quickening and discipline 
of the whole population, taking off religious restrictions, and 
giving to them equality of right, and by that means alone, can 
they exalt the nation. England is going through a bitter sec- 
tarian, dangerous conflict over their new school-boards, and if 
they cannot relinquish denominational plans, they are likely to 
engender new strifes and to incur new mischiefs. 

We have stood thus far on an elevated platform ; shall we 
go down into the dark region of controversial bitterness, 
where self-conceit and rationalism are our light, and 
where the sun of God's Revelation shines no more? Sir 
Philip Sidney said to Queen Elizabeth of the courage which 
animated the Netherlands against Philip II, "It is the spirit 
of the Lord, and is invincible." So may it be said of us, if 
we draw our principles from the Word of God and from the 
throne of grace. So may it be said of the battles of freedom, 
waged by believing hearts ; and by eloquent tongues, in any 
land, whether by Castelar in Spain, or by Montalembert in 
France, or by Reinkens in Germany, or by Cavour in Italy, or 
by Hyacinthe in Geneva. Only let them and us be careful to. 
wield the genuine, glittering sword of God's Word. Our hu- 
man instruments are blunt and weak. They have no power 
25 



378 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



to pierce the fortifications of infidelity, or to cast down the 
muniments of rock, thrown up around the sovereignty of 
the pope. 

III. We may mark the progress of affairs in Spain, a 
country that has made, during the year, decisive advancement. 
She has established a republic, and has placed at its head 
Sefior Castelar, a man who would be remarkable, in any coun- 
try and in any age, for his self-forgetful and heroic devotion to 
the principles of liberty. Already he and his counsellors 
have introduced important reforms, especially in the matter of 
education. The secular instruction of the schools is taken 
away from the church, and put into the administrative control 
of the state. Teachers are selected by the state ; education is 
made literary and scientific; discussion is free; worship is 
free. Each man may choose his religion by the dictates of 
his own conscience. He may guide his religious life by the 
reading of the Bible, by discussion with friends, by holy in- 
fluences of the Sabbath, by voluntary worship of the sanct- 
uary, — not by school dictation nor by priestly usurpation. 
This is a great gain. The Carlists are moved by a fierce 
superstition, and are carrying on an intolerant religious per- 
secution. Two other factions are contending against the 
republic in Spain, and it may be overthrown. Castelar has 
infinite difficulties. 

At this interesting juncture of Spanish affairs, an occasion 
of disagreement, and it may be of war, has sprung up between 
this government and the Spanish republic, greatly to the 
regret of every lover of liberty and of progress. The Vir- 
ginius, a buccaneering vessel, sent out on a piratical expedi- 
tion under false colors, has been captured by Cuban officers 
and by her naval troops". Doubtless, by this measure, Spain 
has encroached upon the independence of the seas ; but the 
Yirginius herself had now flagrantly encroached upon the 
laws of neutrality. The ship is sunk ; but important questions 
are yet to come before our legal authorities to determine the 
character of her owners and of her crew and of her papers 
and of her flag. There is no doubt that Cuban agents have 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 379 

been active in New York city ; that foreigners, with no valid 
right, have used our flag to violate our neutrality laws, and 
to provoke war with another nation. We cannot demand 
any further concession, when, by the negligence of our 
officers, we have violated the plighted faith of nations. We 
cannot be insensible to the great difficulties under which 
Castelar and his cabinet have acted. We cannot doubt that 
General Cushing, whose knowledge of Spain is complete, 
whose knowledge of international law is wide and profound, 
whose remarkable ability as diplomatist has been more than 
once tested, will carry us through these narrow straits, 
where two seas meet. 

Let us not provoke war with this new Spanish republic, a 
government starting under such happy omens, not only for 
Spain, but for the triumph of Christian doctrine and for the 
progress of all the nations. Even if the Virginius were 
a merchantman, on a voyage of legitimate trade ; if the 
papers and the flag and the invoices, and the dialect of the 
crew, and the testimony of the officers, and the whole circle of 
the evidences, had proved her to be on a friendly mission and 
within the defences of our law; still, remember that Gen- 
erals Burriel and Jovellar are but half-taught in the code of an 
enlightened administration ; that they rule over fierce and 
savage tempers, less instructed and more prejudiced than 
themselves. Remember that Castelar and his counsellors have 
made concessions, have given up the ship, have restored the 
prisoners, have acknowledged haste and error. Remember 
that republicanism is drawing its new-born breath in Spain, 
and do not strangle that infant of a day. Do not provoke 
war, — consider its immeasurable crime, which must rest some- 
where ; consider its infinite evils, which will fall upon both 
parties. Exercise magnanimity and forbearance. Do not 
think that war with any country is a trifle in its injury, or its 
expense, or its shock to the conscience of the world. We have 
just passed through one war, with the general sympathy of all 
the monarchies against the North, and with the general 
expectation that republicanism was to be crushed. Let us not 



380 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

again awaken the joy of tyrannies and of aristocracies and of 
all haters of liberty. Let us not think it an easy thing to 
subjugate Cuba, nor a desirable thing to place this island gem 
in our coronet of stars. We call it the " Gem of the Antil- 
les"; but its brightness is of the earth and the air and the 
sky, its perennial flowers and fruits, its sea-girt breezes, its 
genial sunshine ; it is not in the character of its inhabitants. 

" There every prospect pleases, 
And only man is vile." 

True religion, and the manners and the education and the 
aims of the people, are wholly foreign and incongruous to us. 
Its institutions and its laws cannot be woven in with ours. 
Set it among our stars, — it would be but a baleful light, a 
meteor strange and portentous, rushing athwart every orbit 
of regular and blessed progress. Doubtless General Sheridan, 
or General Forrest of Fort Pillow memory, might lead a 
conquering army through those picturesque scenes of Nature. 
But do we wish to train our Southern brethren in the love of 
military glory and in the further practice of war? Do we 
wish to sacrifice any more of our brothers and sons to this 
bloody Moloch ? Do we wish to follow the example of Great 
Britain, when that government loosed the Alabama from a 
neutral port, under the flag of a professed friend, to prey 
upon our commerce? Have we not just learned a significant 
lesson on this question of filibustering, and gone through a 
long and painful course of controversy and diplomacy, in 
order to prepare our minds to understand: our duty? I trust 
the danger of war is wholly passed ; still, one or two points in 
the negotiation are not fully settled, and there are journals on 
both sides which are stirring up angry strife. 

It is not for us to speculate about the ultimate fate of Cuba 
or of San Domingo or of Mexico or of the Canadas. They 
may be absorbed in our on-rushing tide of industry, enter- 
prise, freedom ; or they may not. They may assert and main- 
tain their own independence, with equal privileges to them- 
selves and less danger to us. We cannot assume the preroga- 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 381 

tive of fore-knowledge and of fate; much less can we intro- 
duce the jar which war occasions, changing all forms of law 
and order, dislocating courses of history, bringing over a land 
the red and lurid clouds of crime and death, unless the finger 
of Justice immutable, and of Mercy, whose eyes are wet with 
pity, points unequivocally the way. I close what I have to 
say on the subject of Spain, in the words of Castelar himself. 
In a debate in the Spanish parliament, Manterola, canon of 
Vittoria, denounced freedom of worship, and eulogized the 
papal authority, referring to memorials of the past. Castelar 
replied : — 

"I have seen the memorials and the ruins of Eome, — 
its three hundred domes ; its basilica of St. Peter's ; its Holy 
Week ; its sacred altars and its sacred ashes ; its gigantic 
sybils of Michael Angelo ; its fresco of the French emissaries, 
who sent the head of Coligny to the Pope; its apotheosis of 
the ecclesiastical glories of the executioners, the assassins 
of St. Bartholomew's Eve. I have sought in these for faith ; I 
have found only deceit and doubt. Great is God in Sinai. 
The thunder precedes him ; the lightning accompanies him ; 
the light envelops him ; the earth trembles ; the mountains 
fall in pieces. But greater is the God of Calvary, nailed to 
the cross, wounded with a spear, crowned with thorns, the 
life-blood ebbing, and yet saying, 'Father, forgive them, they 
know not what they do ! ' Great is the religion of immutable 
Justice, but greater is the religion of pardoning Love. And 
in the name of that religion, I ask you to write on your laws 
and your Constitution, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ! " 

IV. And what shall we say of Turkey f Is that ancient 
and semi-barbarian empire to be overthrown or to be per. 
petual ? Is its influence favorable to the liberties of the world 
and to the spread of Christian doctrine, or adverse ? If the 
Turkish empire falls, which are the kingdoms and which the 
nations that are to be benefited? If it is christianized, and 
its mighty political and educational enginery is turned to 
work for Christ, then its power of spreading the truth and of 
fortifying the arguments of faith is almost illimitable. The 
Turkish power, established in the Middle Ages, and long over- 
whelming in military strength, has awakened the deep interest 



382 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

of the historian, as well as of the theological reasoner who 
studies the annals of the church. The Saracen was early con- 
quered by the Turk; and the Turk was subdued by the 
Tartar ; and the blended power of Turkish and Tartaric 
dynasties was long resisted by the Greeks. When at last the 
Greeks were defeated in 1453, the Turks still ravaged Eastern 
Europe for two hundred years. They have been a wandering 
and predatory people, fond of the hunt more than of agricul- 
ture ; dwelling in tents more than in cities ; propagating their 
religion by the sword, not by the arguments of the reason. 
They have forty millions of people, — ten millions in Africa ; 
seventeen millions Mussulmans; eleven millions of the Greek 
and Armenian churches ; one million Christians and Jews. 

One hundred and fifty churches of American missionary 
origin are now planted in that land. And doubtless the 
influence, now spreading most rapidly, and most likely to 
leaven the whole lump of society, and to transform tfie whole 
organization of the state, is that of the churches established 
and sustained by the American Board. Russia looks on with 
eager eyes, ready to snatch at Constantinople. France is 
neither asleep nor indifferent, as to the destiny of Turkey. 
England stands firm, and with armed front, to hold the 
balance of power. Austria has lands outlying upon the 
Turkish borders, and is meditating when to strike. The fall 
of Turkey would be the convulsion of the world. The 
christianization of Turkey would be the most glorious triumph 
which Christ has won in the modern ages. That beautiful 
land around the Black Sea and the Marmora ; that bay on 
which Constantinople is built ; that harbor where a thousand 
navies might ride at anchor; that city of oriental splendor 
and fame, the entrepot for all commerce ; that clime of un- 
fading flowers and of salubrious airs; that kingdom of renown, 
powerful in the seventh century, when learning and thought 
turned thitherward for refuge ; eager and proud in the 
fifteenth century, which was the period of discovery; still 
encamping in barbaric strength, and fortified with military 
skill against all comers; now searching after the knowledge 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 383 

of the modern science, and the inventions of the modern art; 
that empire, with the beauty and the glory of hoary hairs 
upon its head, may yet become the kingdom of our Lord, the 
Cross set up as its sign of power ; the crescent, a waning moon, 
going down in the western sky. In that land the spirit of 
inquiry is everywhere aroused. The beauty of a Christian 
civilization is everywhere admitted. Thousands of minds are 
emancipated theoretically from error. Souls are convicted 
of sin; heathen are converted to Christ; seeds of truth are 
planted, and germs of righteousness are springing, which shall 
hereafter shake like Lebanon. Citadels of Christian power 
and homes of Christian beauty are there set up, in the midst 
of Satan's thrones; and those thrones, like Dagon of old, are 
tottering to their fall. Is not this garden of the world, long 
overgrown with thorns, again to blossom as the rose, under 
the quickening impulse of American ideas, under the preach- 
ing of American missionaries, and the sway of Gospel truth ? 
If Spain and France and Italy are even now republican ; if 
England and Prussia and the lesser states of Germany are 
shaken to their deep foundation by theories of representative 
government; if Portugal and Austria and every other auto- 
cratic empire rocks and reels in its seat of power, before the 
breezes of freedom that are sweeping over the world, — how 
long, think you, before the Sultan of Turkey and the Shah of 
Persia and the Khedive of Egypt and the Sheiks of Arabia and 
the chieftains of every tribe will hear the rush of those winds 
of liberty, of those gales of heaven, and will be carried by 
them upward, towards the pure, millennial civilization ? It 
may not be permitted to us to plant republics there ; it may 
not be the form of government best adapted to that people ; 
but the faith of Christ is the crown of glory to all kindreds 
and tongues. There, let the light of Christian knowledge be 
kindled; there, let the incense of a pure worship be offered; 
and then what power of holy propagandism shall go with that 
race! Mightier than the sword of Mohammed ; mightier than 
the learning of the Arabians ; mightier than the fierce passions 
of Vandal tribes, in their original onslaught upon the Turkish 



384 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

empire ; mightier than the blended power of Saracen and 
Tartar and Turk and Greek ; mightier than the crash of arms 
in the Crimea, when England and France and Turkey and 
Russia met in the bloody fray, — shall that wave of evangeli- 
zation spread, from Constantinople outward, over Asia and 
Africa and Europe and the Isles of the Sea ! 

V. I wish to refer to the death, during the year, of two men, 
great in the realm of science and of intellectual philosophy, — 
Louis Agassiz and John Stuart Mill. Mr. Mill is thought by 
many to be one of the most gifted writers of the nineteenth 
century. I cannot so regard him. But I admit that in some 
departments of writing he is startling and powerful, and that 
two of his books, on Liberty and on Representative Govern- 
ment, have important political principles. But his reasonings 
reject the Revelation of God, and are founded only on nat- 
ural instincts and intuitions. He has little or no reverence for 
any law, or institution, or custom ; for any sacred memory, or 
any historic grandeur. The Scriptures of course did not bind 
him, and he claimed that he might " set aside the ordinances 
of society," and this he did, openly and boldly, in his domestic 
relations. 

As a contrast to the sad unbelief of Mill, an infidelity 
which weakens his strength, and confuses his mind, and well- 
nigh destroys the value of his writings, we may adduce the 
splendid example of Louis Agassiz, our own great scientific 
writer, so recently deceased. He was a man of more accurate 
science, in all departments of natural philosophy better in- 
formed, and wider and deeper in thought, than Stuart Mill. 
On questions of politics and metapyhsics, Mr. Mill was a larger 
student; but these are the exact questions, with regard to 
which Comte and all the" Positivists declare nothing certain 
can be known. They fall back upon the relations of science 
and the observations of nature for theological conclusions 
and here Agassiz' knowledge and discernment and argument 
are immeasurably superior to those of Mill. Mill denies the 
Revelation, and denies natural religion. Agassiz recognizes 
the creative agency, and the constant interposition and per- 
sonal will of God. 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 385 

Louis Agassiz, of Huguenot descent, looking back to an an- 
cestral line of six generations of Protestant ministers, educated 
in the great seminaries of Germany, had already attained a 
continental fame, as an original explorer and discoverer in 
science, before he came to this country. That reputation he 
has carried forward, that knowledge he has perfected, in this 
land, year by year and day by day. He has established a 
museum of zoological and physiological history, the most 
valuable of the world. It has eight laboratories, with an 
accomplished professor for each ; with twenty-eight laborers 
constantly employed; with original investigations going on 
continually; searching into the secrets of nature, throwing 
new light on dark problems, bringing the material and the 
theological relations of science into a more perfect system, 
everywhere strengthening the argument for the being and 
personal will of God. That museum and its arrangements of 
professional duty and of experimental science is carried for- 
ward at an expense of $80,000 yearly. 

No one who reads Agassiz' last published article in the Jan- 
uary number of the Atlantic Monthly, will doubt his power to 
range through the whole field of animal life and of geological 
fossil remains. No one will doubt his power to analyze and to 
judge of the prevalent Darwinian theories, as to the origin of 
man, as to the incessant workings of God's providence and 
God's will in man's history. Those most fanciful ideas of a 
monkey ancestry, those supposed laws of the change of spe- 
cies by natural selection, evolution, and development, those 
ascriptions of power to blind law, those infidel attacks upon 
the doctrine of God's government over men, and of Christ's 
redemption of human souls, are laid prostrate by Agassiz, as 
the weeds of the meadow are cut by the mower's scythe. The 
expense of the museum may seem extraordinary, and the 
value of these zoological discoveries may to some minds appear 
doubtful. But it is the study of a life-time ; it is the victory 
of a sublime genius ; it is the expense of gathering specimens 
from thousands of miles, of preserving them with costly mate- 
rials, of publishing books to advance the science, of paying 



386 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER, 

the salary of teachers, of keeping up the whole series of ex- 
perimental processes at Cambridge. 

It is marvelous ; it is an honor to the Republic, especially 
to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ; it is a discipline of 
mind, and quickening of education, for the whole land, and for 
the future ages. It gives to every school-house a larger field, a 
higher motive, and a richer result. It opens mysteries, and 
acquaints us with God. It gives to every minister and to 
every church an evidence and argument, by which the mouth 
of the scoffer may be silenced ; the grovellings of the sensual- 
ist checked ; the glory of God revealed. We know, from mul- 
tiplied sources, from the history of man, from the doctrine of 
the Revelation, from the sacrifice of Christ, from the confessed 
experiences of regenerate souls, that there is a violent opposi- 
tion to the government of God abroad in the world. We 
know that infidelity, and scorn, and worldly lusts are doing 
their utmost to overthrow religious principles and high-toned 
moral purity; and that, with a multitude of souls, they are 
deplorably successful. We would build impregnable walls 
around our liberties, our religion, our virtue. We would 
defend the state, the family, the church. We would plant a 
holy, self-denying resolve in every heart, and fix that deter, 
mination beyond the assault of appetite, or earthly lures, or 
Satan's treacheries. We would lead bewildered souls to 
Christ, and as helpful to this great end, we welcome with 
exceeding joy all allies like Agassiz, all supporters of the 
true science, which acknowledges God and reverences the 
Bible. 

I come back, for a moment, to those defects and blemishes 
which so greatly mar the influence of John Stuart Mill. 
Those defects are perfectly obvious to one who understands 
the laws of the higher education. He was a disorganizing 
critic ; seeking for faults in established systems ; looking to 
see where he could tear down, not where he could build up ; 
or, if he attempted to build, constructing out of odd, uncouth, 
incoherent views of the human mind. Such men always find 
cracks in a building, and defects of architecture where it 



REVIEW OF THE YEAR 1873. 387 

might seem as if you could build a better house, and tinder 
with which to kindle fires, and combustible materials in human 
edifices, so that it is easy to burn down a village or a city. 
Mr. Mill says that " the amount of eccentricity in a society is 
in proportion always to the genius and the mental vigor which 
it contains." This is a dangerous and a fatal proposition. It 
is the rock on which Mr. Mill's principles of honor and of 
duty strike, so that his hopes of usefulness go down in the 
deep sea buried. Let any man imagine that the past is an 
empty record ; that no great truths have been discovered ; 
that no important principles have been established ; that 
eccentricity and strangeness of opinion and conduct are the 
test of a great mind, and he is as sure to waste his powers in 
foolish, quixotic, abortive undertakings as he is to live. 

I have known something of these quixotic speculations and 
these theological bush-whackers. Several have fallen within 
my personal knowledge, even more intimately than I could 
have desired. Their cry was, " Reform everything ! " No ac- 
cepted opinion, no natural custom, no prevalent habit is right 5 
get up a new fashion of clothes, and wear bloomers ; alter the 
constitution of your society, and bring in something totally 
different from your present debates and essays ; overthrow 
your classical and mathematical education, and ask the ancient 
pagans, or the modern gymnasts, for a substitute ; separate 
families, and inaugurate free love ; overthrow the laws, and 
get some new legislation ; break down the church, and set 
up a Brook Farm; spurn the Bible, reject Christ, and take 
David Hume for your guide into the dark unknown. I sat at 
the table with one of these infidel reformers for a year of my 
college life, and these speculations were iterated and reiterated 
in my ear, till I was tired, and faint, and distressed. Early in 
my ministry, the whole matter came up again. Another of 
these reformers was a member of my church. The Herald of 
Freedom, the editorials of which were among the strongest 
and most ingenious infidel writings of the century, was widely 
read in my congregation. It became my duty, with personal 
reluctance and with infinite pain, to go through a course of 



388 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

discipline and of excommunication with these followers of 
infidelity. The whole argument was canvassed, in epistolary 
correspondence, in church meetings, in private conversa- 
tions, before ecclesiastical councils. It is no egotism for me 
to say, that I am familiar with these unbelieving and disor- 
ganizing sophistries. I have been compelled to study them, 
against my will. I most affectionately and earnestly warn 
the beloved youth of this congregation against them. Many 
of those speculations are plausible and fascinating. They 
claim to be scientific and poetic, and they have a charm for 
the scholarly. They introduce novelties ; they strike out on 
intellectual adventures ; they have a power over the energetic 
and the bold. I implore you to beware of the irreligious and 
pernicious literature which is so rife in our country and 
times; I implore you to reject the infidel conclusions of John 
Stuart Mill and his coadjutors. Be ye followers of Agassiz, of 
Hugh Miller, of David Brewster, of Edward Hitchcock, of 
Benjamin Silliman, of Mrs. Somerville, of Caroline Herschel, 
of men and women whose science has honored God, not of 
the destroyers of faith. Be ye followers of Christ, and then 
shall you have opportunity of studying science, with higher 
advantages in heaven. 



METHODS OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 



[The following sermon was first preached in the John-street Church, in 
September, 1867, at a united service of the Congregational Churches. It was 
also preached at Maiden, Mass., in 1871. It has biographical value as an uncon- 
scious exhibition of Dr. Foster's own inner religious life. He was thoroughly a 
spiritually-minded man, as this sermon, evidently written from his heart, shows 
most plainly. It must not be supposed, from the miscellaneous and partially 
secular character of the sermons already inserted, that such was the prevailing 
peculiarity of his preaching. On the contrary, his utterances were singularly 
devout and spiritual, and this discourse is a specimen of his ordinary pulpit efforts, 
in its taking up the familiar old truths of the every-day Gospel, — just those truths 
which every man needs to hear over and over again, — and putting them in the 
golden setting of his own choice words. Dr. Foster avoided novelties in the pul- 
pit; he never strained after effect, and the words which follow show how admi- 
rably he succeeded in making the old truths fresh and attractive. The closing- 
illustration of the sermon is a brief but accurate description of Lowell, as he saw 
it daily from the windows of his home on the hill-side. He was a keen observer 
of the busy manufacturing city in which he dwelt, and its buildings, its machin- 
ery, its canals, its bridges, its industries in all their great diversity, were con- 
stantly suggesting to him appropriate and forcible illustrations.] 

Jude 20:21. — "Keep yourselves in the love of God." 

"Keep yourselves in the love of God." Here the apostle 
strikes upon the grand characteristic of the Christian, the in- 
dwelling and ever-vital principle of action, which rules over 
every affection and aim. It is man's chief end to know God 
and to glorify Him. It is the characteristic of the impenitent 
mind, that it forgets God and loves inferior things. Business, 
family, friends, occupy the thoughts. Scholarship, ingenuity, 
mental progress, engage the heart. Ambition, glory, fame, 
enlist desire. Pleasure, vanity, folly, absorb attention. Some 
one or more of these objects come between the soul and God, 
and shut out the light of his benignant countenance. It is the 
characteristic of the broken-hearted believer, that his affections 
are recalled from their wanderings, back to God. It is the 



390 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

characteristic of the consistent Christian, that he loves God 
with ever-increasing devotion; that he thinks of Him with 
ever-new delight; that he pants for fellowship with Him with 
intense desire ; that nothing can satisfy him, nothing can com- 
fort him, so long as the light of God's countenance is hidden 
from him. 

I. Why should we cherish supreme love to God? Because 
God is worthy of our supreme affection. He is the only pure, 
wise, all-loving, all-powerful Being in the universe. We are 
constantly seeking after an ideal of excellence. Where is the 
perfect man? Where is the true-hearted patriot? Where is 
the discerning statesman? Where is the proved and faithful 
friend ? Where is the matchless saint, whose life corresponds 
with the principles he avows ? We cannot find the perfect 
man. We cannot, by any sketches of the reason, or by any 
pictures of the imagination, so combine the qualities of good- 
ness as to form an ideal of perfection. God alone is perfect. 
The Revelation draws the portrait. The whole creation cor- 
roborates the doctrine. The entire history of the world brings 
in its testimonies. God is perfect. The character and govern- 
ment of God satisfy the thoughts, and lift them, as on wings, 
to sublimest meditations. 

God is worthy of our love, as the one only Fountain of life, 
light, and joy ; as the eternal, self-existent, immutable Jehovah; 
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; one in three, and three in 
one ; Supreme Governor of men and worlds ; possessed of all 
glorious attributes ; directing all things by natural law, and 
by daily providences, which are the manifestation of His im- 
mediate will, which interweave their constant action, never in 
conflict, but always in agreement with law. His watchful 
care of us has no precedent nor parallel in earthly histories. 

He loved us, and gave His Son to die for us, while we were 
yet enemies. He waits, long and patiently, for our repentance. 
He orders His eternal counsels, and all earthly dispensations, 
for our spiritual good. Surely, we ought to love God. Infi- 
nite perfections draw us to Him. Infinite benefits impose 
their obligation. Promises of an infinite reward enhance the 



METHODS OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 391 

claim. If there be any clear perception of duty, or any grati- 
tude, or virtue, or praise, how can we fail to cherish for Him 
a sincere, intense, ever-increasing love ? 

II. How shall we maintain this love f 

1. In order to keep yourselves in the love of God, you 
must have an unfaltering perseverance, resisting the tempta- 
tions of the world. If God gives you prosperity in busi- 
ness, do not let the cares of life, and the deceitfulness of 
riches, enter in and choke the heavenly word. Do not 
multiply your engagements, so that you have not time for 
secret and public and family prayer. Do not so far 
absorb the mind with anxious secularities, do not so far 
overtask and weary the mind with toil, that you are 
disqualified for the service to which God calls. Remem- 
ber that God has an indefeasible claim upon your time. You 
must have leisure for reflection, to keep the flame of piety 
alive in your own soul. You must have hours of every day 
consecrated to God, for prayers, for spiritual growth, and for 
the conversion of your fellow-men. With a diligent thought- 
fulness, and with a resolute self-control, you must carry the 
spirit of the Sabbath into the week. You kindle a fire on 
your hearth-stone every morning ; you cannot bury a coal in* 
ashes, and then find it after seven days. No more can you 
take the coal which the seraphim have brought from the altar 
of God, to warm your heart on the Sabbath, and bury it up 
in worldly affections and worldly occupations, and then find 
it alive and glowing on the following Sabbath. You must 
walk with God every day. You must give to God some direct, 
conscious, deliberate service of the mind and of the hands 
every day, or worldliness will take away the life of your piety, 
your hopes will fade, and you will be left, like the barren 
heath, on which neither rain nor dew descended. It is needful 
for you, my brethren, in order to escape the taint and the tor- 
ment of earthly-mindedness, that you should have special 
seasons of earnest, unbroken, religious culture. There were 
pentecostal times of old, when the disciples were with one 
accord in one place ; and there they continued in conference 



392 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

and prayer and supplication, till the windows of heaven were 
opened, and the gracious rain descended. It is accordant 
with the nature of mind ; it is accordant with the methods of 
the wise men of this world, taken to awaken general enthu- 
siasm ; it is accordant with the uniform history of the Church, 
to present the truth with reiterated, persistent effort, in order 
to stir up one another's pure minds, and to bring down, by 
communion of thought and by blended prayers, the blessing 
of heaven. 

2. In order to keep yourselves in the love of God, it is 
necessary, still further, to secure the advantages of Christian 
fellowship. Reflect upon the amazing influence which relig- 
ious conversation has upon the mind. God has constituted 
all minds with certain great resemblances, and has given to 
the Christian character, unity of faith and aims and experien- 
ces. Yet there is diversity of thought and of emotion, and 
so much of diversity as to make the dependence of one 
Christian mind upon another, and of one Christian heart upon 
another, very great. You know the principle of division of 
labor, which holds in all mechanic trades and manual toils. 
The farmer would be insane who should think himself compe- 
tent to make his own hat and shoes and clothing and house, 
and implements of agriculture, and do all his other work be- 
sides. The scholar would be wholly bewildered and misguided, 
who should think to be a universal genius, compassing all scien- 
ces and all arts. This inability grows out of the limitations of 
our knowledge, out of the diversity of our tastes, out of the 
dissimilarity of our talents, out of the high appointment of 
God, by which man is designed to be the helper of his fellow- 
man. In the Christian life we are mutually dependent, and 
shall be to the end. Let us not think to shut ourselves up in 
our shell, and there grow ; we shall attain only the growth of 
the snail or the oyster. Let us not imagine that, like the 
eremites of the desert or like the hermits of the cave, we can 
fence ourselves away from society, and cultivate spirituality, 
and walk with God. Our piety must have the sun and the 
air and the rain and the wind, in order to a healthy growth, as 



METHODS OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 393 

much as the wheat and the corn. God gives to His children 
diverse tendencies, experiences, gifts of mind. One has a 
bent towards logical thought, and argument and philosophic 
relations appear in all his talk. Another gathers up facts, 
events, statistics, and historical information is poured out 
largely from his conversation and remarks. A third has 
poetic imagination, and his thoughts glow with the brightness 
of analogical illustration. A fourth has deep emotion, and 
he cannot speak, when God has poured His sanctifying grace 
into his soul, without awakening profound sympathy. Simi- 
lar diversity occurs, in Christians, as to the points of doctrine 
which interest them. One has had a fearful force of passion 
to subdue, has found himself well-nigh conquered by strong 
propensities and by evil habits ; his conversation is very likely 
to dwell upon the danger, the guilt, the tyranny of sin. 
Another is a deep student of principles, of relations, of laws ; 
he seeks to harmonize the doctrines of the Bible ; he would 
fain unlock the deep mysteries of nature and of grace ; he 
discourses of the high things of God's kingdom, and of the 
deep things of the soul. Still another is of a confiding nature. 
He has never been troubled by doubt ; he has a cheerful, 
hopeful temperament ; trials and difficulties and conflicts pass 
him by on velvet feet ; his heart is full of love and joy ; he 
has assurance of faith, and his mouth is full of thanksgiving 
to his Redeemer. A thousand persons may examine some 
obscure problem of doctrine or of duty, and each one of the 
thousand may take some particular view which no other one 
of the thousand has thought of. All this implies no weakness 
of the evidences of truth, but only their multiplication and 
diversity and strength. It implies no encouragement to error, 
but rather a certainty that the inconsistencies and contradic- 
tions of error shall all be brought to light, and that error 
itself shall be overthrown by the progress of truth. 

I mention these diversities, to say that no soul can sound 
the whole diapason, and play on all the chords of God's truth 
and Christian experiences. We need the fellowship of con- 
genial minds, in order to comprehend the wonders of faith 
26 



394 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

and the fulness of grace. We need to speak often one to 
another, in order that we may know what God is doing for 
the whole family of the saints. We need to read many histo- 
ries and many biographies, in order to comprehend the ampli- 
tude of religion's gifts and religion's comforts. We need to 
be familiar with the Old Testament as well as the New, that 
we may discern the progress of the Divine dispensation, and 
of the whole revelation and administration of God. 

The conversation of Christians, if thoughtful, tender, and 
wise, has an almost irresistible hold upon the conscience. 
The Christian speaks out of the heart, and heart-experiences 
have always a wonderful impressiveness. I notice that our 
Methodist brethren, in their annual meetings, close with an 
assembly for the recital of experiences ; and this meeting, in 
which sometimes one hundred and fifty persons speak within 
the space of two hours, carries the religious interest and 
power up to the highest pitch of intensity. It is the fusing 
of all hearts together; it is the stimulation of every mind 
by the varied thoughts of other minds; it is the binding of a 
thousand evidences into one linked and riveted chain ; it is 
the prostration of many souls in penitence before the Cross, 
and the blending of many voices in one united supplication be- 
fore the throne. Its practical power, using the daily events 
of human life and the outbursting emotions of the sanctified 
heart, is very great. President Edwards, in his remarks on 
the great Northampton and Whitefieldian revival, says : 
"Nothing seemed to produce greater effects on the minds of my 
congregation than recitals of the prevalence of religion in 
other places." There is a wonderful power which histories, 
and biographies, and personal experiences have over the mind. 
We never tire of the skilfully wrought poem or romance, if 
it be a vivid and natural sketch of human affections, of desire 
and aversion, of hope and fear, of love and indignation, of 
joy and sorrow, of mighty impulses, great thoughts, noble 
aims, and earnest resolves. " The words of the wise," says 
Solomon, " are as nails and goads, fastened by the master of 
assemblies." Probably no individual in this assembly can- 



METHODS OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 395 

not bear testimony, from his own recollection, of some relig- 
ious conversation with father, or mother, or teacher, with dear 
companion or Christian friend, where the words spoken were 
indeed as nails, well clinched, — they abide in memory, and 
will till life shall end. Their impression is deep, indelible, 
sacred; hallowed by death, permanent as time, to endure 
forever. Often, how often, have we sat together in heavenly 
places, communing with the saints. Often, how often, has 
Christ Himself entered within the doosr, and talked with us, 
as He did with His disciples in the Emmaus journey, till our 
hearts have burned within us. We have seen Him, not visibly, 
but with the eye of faith ; we have heard Him, not audibly, 
but with the ear of prayer. 

It is when the Spirit of God is poured out, and Christians 
are awakened, and conversions are multiplied, that these 
meetings and conversations have an inimitable beauty and an 
inexpressible worth ; then the heart is enlarged, the intellect 
is quickened, the tongue is loosed ; then deepest interest is 
felt, and intensest longings are cherished for the spiritual wel- 
fare of neighbors and friends ; then all Gospel doctrines, all 
religious facts, all events of the day, bearing on the question 
of revivals, become of indescribable significance. Then we 
prove the power of prayer ; then we comprehend the unseen 
agency of the Holy Ghost; then we see how feeble words 
of ordinary religious conversation are omnipotent, and become 
like the hammer that breaks the rock, like the fire that con- 
sumes the dross, like the cleaving sword that divides asunder. 
We see how insignificant instrumentalities become mighty, 
through God, to the awakening, conviction, and conversion of 
men, to the pulling down of the strongholds of errors, to 
the building up of the enduring fortifications of truth. 

O for the power of this believing, loving, alluring speech 
in our Christian assemblies and in our ordinary daily fellow- 
ship! Christians, let your mouth be opened to speak for 
Christ. Who can impress as you can, the love of Jesus, if 
you have felt it in your heart ? Who can tell of the burden 
of sin, as you can, if you have groaned, and prayed, and 



396 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

sighed, and wept, and fainted under it? Who can reprove, 
exhort, entreat as you can, with gentleness and persuasive- 
ness, because you have known how much you have to be for- 
given, how multiplied your spiritual foes, how terrible your 
spiritual conflicts? Who can picture Heaven as you can 
picture it, if you have looked within the gates ? Who can 
delineate the darkness of despair and the agonies of woe as 
you can delineate them, if you have wrestled with Satan and 
stood on the brink of Hell? Who or what can give assurance, 
like the actual Christian life, and the living, speaking tongue, 
of the power of faith, of the beauty of holiness, of the vic- 
tories of prayer ? O my friends, go forth, and in Christ's stead, 
moved by the argument of the Cross, restrained by the history 
of Christian experiences, relying upon the co-operating and 
supernatural power of the Holy Ghost, speak to your dying 
fellow-men of their instant duty and privilege ! Then shall 
you keep yourselves in the love of God. 

3. In order to keep yourselves in the love of God, you 
must cultivate with assiduous watchfulness a holy life. Relig- 
ion's reality and most impressive recommendation are seen in 
a holy life. We are moved by example more then we are by 
argument. This is the whole history of the world. All lessons 
of human life deeply impress the heart. This is the power 
of society, of the drama, of biography; it is the power 
which moves the crowd on the day of festivals ; it is the 
power which sways the vast congregation, stirred by one im- 
pulse under the passion of a revolution, or under the pathos 
of a startling providence of God; it is the power which 
arouses an invincible sentiment in the soul, and nerves the 
arm with almost superhuman strength, as the multitude rush 
to a conflagration to save a human life, or rush into battle to 
rescue an imperiled nation. A holy life is the leverage power 
by which God will pry the world out of its deep foundations, 
if this mighty, imponderable mass of unbelief, impenitence, 
and sin is ever overturned. It is more than sermons, more 
than books, more than philosophic argument, more than any 
eloquence of words. It is so because it addresses and rouses 



METHODS OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 397 

all the faculties, affections, impulses of man ; it stops not 
short with intellect ; it is not satisfied with moving the sensi- 
bilities of the heart ; it traverses the whole nature. Hope and 
fear, love and hatred, intellect and conscience, memory and 
imagination, — it lays a hand of mighty force upon them all. 
Theological treatises and elaborate sermons find their sustain- 
ing evidences and their thrilling illustrations in human life. 
It would be far easier for the chemist, without any laboratory 
or any apparatus or any experiments, to work out his theories, 
far easier for the astronomer, without any telescope, and I 
had almost said without any stars, to prove his science, than 
for the theologian or the preacher, to impress the minds of 
men without a holy church. 

It is idle and useless for a man to talk religion to us, and then 
live irreligion. He is rowing one way, and looking another ; 
or, rather, he rows first with his right hand on one side of the 
boat, and then with his left hand on the other. He whirls the 
boat around, and makes no progress ; and, in the mean time, 
he is looking every way. He has no fixed aim, he has no 
abiding principle, he has no consistency of doctrine, and no 
harmony of life. If professors of religion do not live a holy 
life, their precepts, exhortations, sermons, so far as the influence 
of .those professors extends, are powerless. Ericsson may pub- 
lish a beautiful system of mechanical forces, and put forth his 
theory of the iron-clads ; but if the Monitor goes into the fight 
with another ship, and is crushed like an egg-shell, who be- 
lieves his theory ? If it comes out of the battle victorious, as 
it did in the conflict with the Merrimack, who doubts his 
theory? Morse and Cyrus Field may discourse, no matter 
how eloquently, of the power of electricity, and of the trans- 
mission of thought from one continent to another ; but the 
proof is in the successful working of the telegraphic wire and 
of the Atlantic cable. All arguments for religion are vain, 
that is, they are without influence over human minds, till you 
have a holy church. I admit, you will admit, that the doc- 
trines of the Bible are high, sublime, divine, perfect. Rousseau 
admits, Gibbon admits, that the life and death of Christ were 



398 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

beautiful, unparalleled, worthy of all admiration. It is the 
conviction and the acknowledgment of all the literary world, 
that the system of Gospel morals has no equal, nor precedent, 
neither in any system of philosophy, nor in any code of law, 
that the world has produced. Why, then, is there so much of 
doubt, of infidelity, of contemptuous indifference and practical 
rejection of the doctrines of Jesus? I find manifold reasons. 
Some, in the alienation of the heart from truth and from 
God ; some, in the preoccupation of the mind, by pleasures 
and by vanities ; some, in the amazing power of appetite and 
passion and the temptations of sense; others, in the fascina- 
tions of error, surrounded and set off, as it is, with the adorn- 
ments of art, and bewilderments of genius, imagination, 
refinement, elegance. But after all, it is not to be denied that 
one great influence of error, in its power over human souls, is 
in the deficiencies of the church. The galvanic battery will 
not send the message ; the Ericsson monitor will not fight the 
battle ; the Fulton machinery will not obey the propulsion of 
steam. Ah, brethren, let us lead a holy life, and then will the 
world be satisfied of the divinity of Christ's religion. 

4. Still again, to maintain supreme love to God, you must 
be constant in prayer for the Holy Ghost. We are in dan- 
ger of losing sight of our dependence upon the Holy Ghost. 
In the great results of spiritual growth, which' we behold, our 
eye is very likely to Be fixed upon the secondary cause, not 
upon the grand, original, efficient cause. God's work is out 
of sight, by hidden influences, by spiritual agencies. He 
works by that wonderful sovereignty and that omnipotent 
fiat, which, though more potent than the whirlwind, or the 
earthquake, or the fire, is nevertheless silent, invisible, inscru- 
table. We are unconscious of the processes by which God's 
grace works within us. When God pardons our sin, we are 
not brought before a judicial assembly, for public trial and 
public acquittal. It is an act between the conscience and its 
Saviour, in the silent communion of the closet, in the secret 
recesses of the will. When God regenerates the heart, He 
brings no public, ostentatious, portentous forces into exercise ; 



METHODS OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 399 

it is a still, small voice ; it is a spiritual, invisible creation. In 
this respect, God's workings are like those beneficent processes 
which go on in the material world. The energy which covers 
the entire earth with beauty and riches, does not come with 
the roar of winds, and the rumbling of earthquakes, and the 
reverberation of thunders; it comes, calm and quiet as the 
morning sunlight, gentle and noiseless as the nightly dew. 
Thus, the grass grows upon the hillside ; thus, the corn ripens 
in the meadows; thus, the blossoms unfold upon the trees. 
Thus, too, the soul, long impenitent, but now convicted of 
sin and broken-hearted before the Cross, passes from the 
un regenerate to the regenerate state, and then, by progressive 
steps of sanctification, goes onward, without making display 
or attracting attention, from knowledge to knowledge, from 
victory to victory, from imperfect services here to the glory 
and the joy of heaven. 

Now, as God's work is thus unseen, we are very likely to 
allow it to pass unacknowledged. We are very likely to 
cherish vanity and pride, as if we ourselves were the authors 
of the work which God has accomplished ; as if we had made 
atonement for our own offences, and regenerated our own 
hearts, and wrought out our own sanctification. Our own 
action is patent before the eye. We study hour after hour, 
and meditate year after year, upon the doctrines of the Gos- 
pel and the duties of the Christian. We spend one day in 
seven in the exercises of public worship. Our wrestlings with 
temptation, and our conflicts with Satan, are at a terrible 
expense of weariness, despondency, fear, and anguish. Our 
work is with the friction and the clatter of machinery, with 
the jostling and the wrenching and the frequent failure of in- 
adequate forces. God's work is with the ever-progressive and 
never-failing movement of omniscience, that acts without con- 
fusion ; of omnipotence, to which there can be no effectual 
resistance. Let me entreat you to be on your guard against 
self-trust and self-sufficiency. God is jealous of His preroga- 
tives. He will not divide His honor with another. If we 
attempt to put our own instrumentalities in the place of God, 



400 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

to imagine that we can convert souls by arrangements and in- 
genuities and enginery of our own, — that we, by our irresistible 
arguments, and by our notable devices, can lead the souls of 
men, as leviathan is led by a hook, — we miscalculate our own 
power. We arrogate to ourselves Divine efficiency. We thrust 
our hands offensively upon the ark of God, to stay it up, and 
we shall be smitten with spiritual blindness in our own souls, 
and with spiritual barrenness in the church of which we are 
members. 

We are dependent upon the power of God for growth 
in grace, and for the efficiency of our Christian labors. We 
are conscious of mortal weakness. We have struggled often, 
and struggled earnestly, and struggled in vain, for self- 
regeneration. The Holy Spirit comes to us in our blind- 
ness and our guilt, in our helplessness and our anguish, 
to take away the pollution of sin, to break the tyranny, 
to change the ruling purposes of the mind, to emancipate the 
soul. The Holy Spirit brings to us a free, inestimable, Divine 
gift. Without money and without price, asking for no prepa- 
ration on our part, — for the only preparation is a willingness 
to be saved, — the Holy Spirit comes and gives the infinite 
bounties of God to the waiting soul. Let the reckless, mis. 
guided, disappointed prodigal have a consciousness of starva- 
tion, and a loathing of the husks on which he has been feed- 
ing; let his anxious thoughts go back to his father's house 
and his father's love and his father's multiplied provisions for 
the happiness of the erring child ; let him only be disposed to 
say, "In my father's house is bread enough and to spare; I 
will arise and go my Father " ; that moment the Holy Spirit, 
that Messenger of grace, stands by his side, anoints his eyes 
with eye-salve, strengthens his feet with conquering energy, 
clothes his deformity with robes of beauty, feasts his soul with 
heavenly banquetings, clasps him' in the strong embraces of 
parental affection, purges away from his soul, as by magic en- 
chantment, all those anterior and degrading and miserable im- 
pulses of rebellion, takes him, ere he is aware, in the chariot 
of Amminadib, into the very midst of the songs and rejoicings 



METHODS OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 401 

and welcomings of the loved ones at home. This is the re- 
viving breath that waked the slumberers in the valley of vision ; 
this is the burning fire that sat on apostolic tongues, on the 
day of Pentecost; this is the new creation, more wonderful 
than the bursting forth of suns and stars, out of " Chaos and 
old Night," into their wide, underrating, luminous orbits ; 
this is the renewing, wrought by the Holy Ghost, shed on us 
abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Let us understand the grandeur of the Divine power, in 
working upon the mind and the heart of man in the regenera- 
tion ; let us pray for the Holy Ghost, — for by this gift our hearts 
shall be cleansed from sin, our idolatrous affections and our 
vain thoughts shall be called back from their wanderings, and 
our aims shall be immeasurably exalted ; let us pray for the 
Holy Ghost, — then shall our vacillating purposes, long balan- 
cing between earth and heaven, between self and Christ, at last 
be fixed, pointing to Christ as the needle to the pole ; then 
shall our ignorance and misapprehensions be removed, for 
God shall couch the blind eye; then shall our weakness be 
made strong, for God shall hold us up ; then shall we go for- 
ward with rapid growth, exemplifying the right, recommend- 
ing religion, laboring for souls, and laboring not in vain. 

Let us keep ourselves in the love of God ; let us resist the 
world ; let our conversation be full of Christ ; let our life be 
blameless and consecrated ; let us pray without ceasing, for 
the Holy Ghost. Then shall we attain spiritual enjoyment 
and spiritual strength. "Building yourselves up," says the 
apostle, " on your most holy faith, keep yourselves in the love 
of God." The language is significant of a costly, symmetri- 
cal, enduring temple. The Church of Christ, faithful and 
true, is a city set on a hill, and quite as easy would it be for 
you to stand on some height overlooking this city, and look 
abroad upon the costly mills and dwellings and churches ; the 
buildings dedicated to mechanism and trade ; upon the rolling 
rivers here conjoining ; upon the gardens of shrubbery, and 
the lines of embowering trees, and the beautiful dwellings that 
nestle beneath ; upon the edifices for school and church 



402 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

culture, pledges of a high intellectual and moral attainment; 
upon this perpetual whirl of business ; this never-ceasing toil ; 
this ever-expanding enterprise ; this ever-accumulating thrift, — 
and be ignorant of the signs of industry and of the privileges 
and blessings which surround New England life, as to view 
the Church of Christ, marking well the glory of her doc- 
trines ; the order of her worship ; the elevation of her 
character ; the splendor of her benevolence ; the extent of 
her influence, — and not see that this is the product, the most 
wonderful product ever seen on earth, of a Divine and match- 
less power. 



PEACE LIKE A RIVER. 



[This sermon was first preached at John-street Church, Lowell, January 22, 
1871, and four weeks afterwards at a United Service of the Congregational 
churches. It was subsequently preached to the Presbyterians worshipping in 
Jackson Hall, Lowell; in the Free-will Baptist Church, Lowell; at Maiden, Sud- 
bury, Tewksbury, Chelsea, Winchendon, Mass., and at East Burke, Vt. It is 
especially marked by that quality of unction which his associate pastor affirms 
to have been his peculiar characteristic. (See Sketch, page 225.) It was evi- 
dently written at white heat and with a full soul. It would be hard to find a 
sermon in which the peculiarities of Dr. Foster's style are more distinct.] 

Is. 48:18. — "0 that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments; 
then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves 
of the sea." 

The text furnishes to us this truth, — obedience to the com- 
mandments of God is a source of mental tranquillity, and that 
tranquillity, small at first as the exhalations of the air, or the 
drops of the cloud, shall become at length like the deep-roll- 
ing river and the illimitable sea. 

I. Two characteristics of the peace of God are indicated 
by the river and the sea. 

1. Its copious abundance. " Then had thy peace been as 
a river." It is not a stagnant pool, but an ever-flowing 
stream, from an exhaustless fountain. It is a river, — broad, 
deep, uniform, — with this only change, it widens in extent, 
and deepens in volume, in its onward course. 

The text conveys the idea of constancy and exhaustlessness. 
"Peace like a river." The river does not dry up in summer 
droughts. It is not dependent on a shower. The spring 
freshet may pass away. The snows, melting from the moun- 



404 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

tains and creating a torrent, will soon disappear. The sur- 
charged cloud of tropical climates may send down its sudden 
and mighty deluge, yet it is as transient as mighty. But the 
river rolls on. Its fountains are deep in the hills, and are 
exhaustless. It rolls on, in sunshine and storm, in summer 
and winter, in night and day, in lowland meadows among 
flowers, in the hill country between high bluffs, — uniform, 
urgent, ceaseless, beautiful, and useful, an emblem of the 
Christian's peace. 

This peace has inexhaustible abundance, because it flows 
from an inexhaustible fountain. God cannot change; He is the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever, — in love, holiness, wis- 
dom, power, sovereignty, goodness, mercy; He is immutable. 
His laws cannot change : they are the stability of His throne ; 
they are the guarantee of His happiness. The heavens may 
be rolled together as a scroll ; the pillars of the earth may 
tremble ; all the forces and forms of matter may be changed ; 
but the laws of holiness and justice and mercy cannot be 
changed. Moral rules cannot be abrogated. Why, then, 
should the covenant of love, into which God enters with His 
children, change ? Why should His omnipotent guardianship, 
and the sanctifying grace which He offers, change ? They will 
not. Why should our hopes and joys change? They will not, 
if we lean upon Him, and commune with Him, and are true to 
duty. 

" Peace like a river." This does not imply that the Chris- 
tian's course is free from conflicts and difficulties and doubts, 
but only that doubts shall be subdued, and difficulties shall be 
overcome, and harassments shall finally cease. The river may 
have its windings, but every one knows whither it is tending. 
The Merrimack River does not hold a straight course : its 
bearings through the State of New Hampshire are south ; after 
passing Chelmsford, it turns east; after passing Pawtucket 
Falls, it turns north ; half a mile from the falls, it meets a 
range of hills. But Belvidere and Centralville Heights, can- 
not stop it ; an eastern bend and a northern bend cannot deflect 
it from its chosen bearings; it goes to the sea. It seems 



PEACE LIKE A RIVER. 405 

very strange that we should be surrounded by so much of doubt. 
But we believe that God appoints the trial as a test of faith, 
as a development of patience, energy, perseverance, and fidelity. 
A period of revivals usually conies after a period of infidelity. 
The river straightens its course after windings and breaks 
through the hills. Doubt and care, skepticism and scorn, are 
rebuked by the Spirit of God ; new force is given to the doc- 
trines of the Gospel; the Church puts on her beautiful gar- 
ments of holiness and praise; men are raised up by God who 
are endowed with holy fervor and invincible argument. 

Thus it was when Luther battled with the errors of Roman- 
ism ; thus, when Whitefield and Wesley, by the weapons of 
the Gospel, demolished the formalism of the English Church ; 
thus, when President Dwight preached his sermons on 
theology, in Yale College, and rolled back the whole tide of 
unbelief which was rushing in upon our seminaries of learn- 
ing; thus, when Lyman Beecher laid bare the fallacies of 
atheism, and checked the course of scoffing in Easthampton ; 
thus, when Edward Dorr Griffin and Francis Wayland lifted 
up the standard of Christ in Boston. 

It seems very strange that these periodic tides of religious 
doubt, corresponding usually with scientific exploration and 
material improvement, should find any place in human 
opinions. We do not tolerate doubt in politics. Our opinions 
here are well defined, clearly cut, and strongly expressed. A 
man is either a Republican or a Democrat ; if he is undecided, 
he gets blows from both sides. As we make progress in 
science, scientific doctrines are more definitely and decisively 
laid down. He who disputes the cardinal principles of chem- 
istry or astronomy, is dismissed into the outer limbo of ec- 
centric, unbalanced, foolish speculators. There is more of 
skepticism in religion because its doctrines are deep and 
high, and spiritual and distant. They pertain to the inner 
soul, to the will of God, to the destinies of eternity. There 
is more of doubt and unbelief in religion, because its duties 
run in direct opposition to impulses of the soul and fashions 
of the world, which are widely prevalent. They require the 
overthrow of appetites and passions, of plottings and ambi- 



406 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

tions, of customs and maxims which have wide and perilous 
sway. Of course, if any of the sophistries of error, or the 
powers of the world, can beat down this religion of self-denial, 
they will do it. Let the Christian maintain a firm and earnest 
mind. Let him live near to Christ, in faith and prayer, study- 
ing thoughtfully the Bible, comparing the facts of history with 
the doctrines of Scripture, longing for a higher style of piety, 
laboring intensely for souls. Then shall infidelities and the 
opposition of scoffing men have no more influence over him 
than the rocks that lie in the river's bed, or the hills that block 
the river's course, can hinder its progress to the sea. 

" Then had thy peace been as a river." Our age is remark- 
able for its awakened intelligence, for earnest popular debate, 
for increased activity. The river gathers volume as it nears 
the sea. Every succeeding generation of Christians has a 
larger responsibility than the one that went before. Let me re- 
mind young Christians, that in these times they are called 
upon to be deeply thoughtful, to be wide awake, to be wholly 
consecrated. Holding on to the faith of the fathers and the 
mothers, who taught your childhood, and guided your youth, 
and have prayed for you all the way, you are expected to 
develop a more intense and efficient energy, as the battlings of 
infidelity, and the openings of Providence, and the exigences of 
the times demand. There is a river of New Hampshire which 
runs from two head branches. It is formed of the Pemi- 
gewasset and the Winnipiseogee Rivers, the one pouring down 
rapidly from the mountains, the other running in a tranquil 
stream from the lakes. So have I seen a young man, drawing 
his physical life, and his mental and moral characteristics, from 
a father of restless and unconquerable energy, and a mother 
of gentleness and love, also unconquerable, combining the 
force and the gentleness into one deep current, adding a cul- 
ture which neither of the parent-streams possessed, and then 
pouring on to the sea, in double volume, like the Merrimack 
itself, with luxuriant harvests, and peaceful villages, and 
opulent cities springing up through its influence and by its 
side. Render, therefore, thanks to God for the pure fountain 
from which your being flows. Cherish devout gratitude for 






PEACE LIKE A RIVER. 407 

the cultivation of the Divine husbandry, through schools and 
churches, through thoughtful societies, and republican institu- 
tions, and just laws, by which your soul and life have been 
exalted. And then, with faith that changes not, and activity 
that wearies not, let your influence, often silent and uncon- 
scious, yet always immeasurable, spread far and wide, carrying 
to the borders of the land, and the ends of the earth, its 
spiritual and imperishable blessings. 

"Peace like a river ! " I do not say there is perfect uniform- 
ity of experience in the Christian's life. God has appointed 
diversity and novelty and ever-fresh delight in all things, and 
monotony nowhere. Now, the river rolls between mountains 
and meanders in plains ; now it rushes in cascades, and now it 
smoothly glides on gentlest downward grades ; now it passes 
by forests, and again by cultivated fields ; now by deserts, and 
anon by blooming gardens ; now by quiet farm-houses, and in 
a little time by populous cities ; still, and ever, the river, in all 
essential features, is the same. Something of this change in 
outward circumstances and chance influences, takes place in 
the Christian's life. There is action and reaction in the en- 
thusiasm of the soul and the energy of labor; there is rise 
and fall of thought and of strength; there are eddyings and 
refluxes and tides in the stream ; but the river is the same, 
and it ever rolls on. The peace is divine; the strength is 
constant; the victories are sure. Not only are the joy and 
strength constant ; they increase as the river rolls to the sea. 
Faith is perfected ; knowledge is enlarged ; the holy purpose 
is confirmed; the mind reaches upward with more intense 
spiritual desire ; the power of sin is broken, and the world is 
trampled under foot. Christ dwells in the heart, and the heart 
is stayed upon God. 

"Rivers to the ocean run, 

Nor stay in all their course ; 
Fire ascending seeks the sun; 

Both speed them to their source ; 
So the soul that 's born of God, 
Upward tends to His abode, 

To rest in His embrace." 



408 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

How beautifully and wonderfully have we seen this rule ex- 
emplified in cases which have come under our own observation, 
in instances of the modern church. We need not go back to 
prophets like David and Isaiah, whose " sweetest songs were 
the last they sung." We need not go back to Paul, the apos- 
tle, whose strength and hope and joy and successes rolled on 
in an ever-deepening current, till he could say at the last, " I 
have fought the fight, I have finished my course, I have kept 
the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of right- 
eousness." We need go back no farther than Whitefield, who 
preached in the morning at Exeter, and died the following 
night in Newburyport, and who left it as one of his last testi- 
monies, " I am not weary of my work, but weary in it." " I 
trust in the grace of my Redeemer." " I am going to the 
bosom of my God." We need go back no farther than Albert 
Barnes, who lately died in Philadelphia, without a moment's 
premonition ; preaching Christ's love up to the last Sabbath 
of his life ; publishing, during the last three weeks of his life, 
three articles, most touching, most beautiful, most instructive, 
on Old Age ; quickening believers to a higher spirituality ; 
preparing his own soul, with new culture of faith and love, for 
the angel's flight. Is not such a river of peace, full-swollen to 
its banks, and rolling on in ever-augmenting tides to the sea? 
He who has this peace is happy. Happy this hour in memory 
and prayer ; happy to-morrow in love and labor ; happy next 
week or next year, for God his Father does not change ; happy 
in all the vicissitudes of life, for the principles on which he 
builds his hopes are enduring ; happy in death ; happy forever ! 

2. The second characteristic of Christian peace, brought 
to view in the text, is fathomless mystery. This peace is not 
only exhaustless as the river ; it is like the deep, illimitable sea. 
" Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness 
as the waves of the sea." The peace of God is substantial 
and enduring. It does not spring from any of the dreams of 
a visionary mind ; it is built on a present and actual good. It 
is the pardon of sin ; it is the regeneration of the heart ; it is 
the elevation of thought ; it is the sanctification of the life ; it 



PEACE LIKE A RIVER. 409 

is comfort in sorrow ; it is strength and success in the fulfil- 
ment of duty ; it is victory and spiritual growth in the hour 
of temptation; it is communion with God; it is hope of 
heaven ! And are not these attainments an actual, present, 
substantial good ? And yet, after all these rich experiences of 
the Christian heart, and after all the emphasis and power of 
human language, the peace of God is incomprehensible and 
mysterious. Height, depth, length, breadth, it passeth knowl- 
edge ; like the ocean, it is fathomless ; like space, it is infinite ; 
like existence, it is eternal ! 

"Then had thy righteousness been as the waves of the sea." 
There is nothing below the sun which is so startling a repre- 
sentative of the eternity and of the measureless riches of God's 
power and grace, as the ocean. We can calculate with some 
degree of accuracy the products of the fields, and the wealth 
of the mines, and the returns of human industry ; but you 
cannot measure the exhalations of the sea, nor the fertility 
which it diffuses, nor the riches which it contains. You can 
confute eclipses ; you can estimate the times and the orbit 
and the rapidity of the planets ; you can mark out roads and 
build structures upon the solid earth ; but you can trace no 
paths upon the sea ; you cannot with certainty prophesy the 
force of to-morrow's tide upon any part of the Atlantic 
coast ; you cannot tell what billows will heave your ship, or 
winds will push your sails, or currents will rule your vessel's 
course, on any day of the year, a hundred miles from land. 
Go out half a league from the shore, on any part of the coast, 
or sail fifty miles in any direction over the Atlantic or Pacific, 
and you know not what riches lie hidden beneath the prow of 
your boat, where freighted ships have gone down. Silver and 
gold may be there ; furs of the North, and cottons of the 
South, and woolens of the temperate zone may be there ; all 
precious grains and spices, mahogany wood and sandal wood, 
shining gems and costly ornaments, manufactures and agricul- 
tural products, books of genius, letters of love, works of art, 
memorials of man's most skilled intelligence, may be there. 
They have suffered a sea change, but they lie buried there. 
27 



410 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

And then in addition to all the riches of the broad, green 
earth, which may be hidden there, are treasures of another 
kind, which mortal eye hath not seen, and mortal hand may 
not touch. Even so, the ocean is but a representation of the 
peace which God gives to the believing soul, of the righteous- 
ness in which He clothes His elect and sanctified children. 
You may draw upon the last resources of what is beautiful and 
valuable in science and friendship and history and human life ; 
you may go to the circles of highest culture and accomplish- 
ment ; you may enter the home of completest harmony and love ; 
you may visit schools where all the appliances of education are 
found; you may go to the palaces of the nobility, or the 
houses of elegance, where wealth, refinement, art, luxury 
dwell; you may go to the Grecian intellect, or the Roman 
power, or the British independence, or the French courtesy, 
or the Italian art, or the German philosophy, or the American 
enterprise ; you may call up hallowed memories and brilliant 
anticipations ; you may ransack and rifle the centuries, the 
kingdoms, and the nations, to find something beautiful and 
blessed. We will match you with more blessed attainments 
and with higher gifts, in the Christian's soul and the Christian's 
life. As the sea has all the treasures which this earth has ever 
possessed, and its own proper treasures besides, so the Chris- 
tian has the largest wealth of mind and heart and life which 
this world can give, and then heaven beyond. As the sailor, 
passing out a hundred miles to sea, may be- urged forward 
towards his desired haven by favoring winds and tides, more 
auspicious and powerful than any which former voyages 
record ; so, we doubt not, we are coming to a millennial period, 
when there will be an energy of Divine peace, and a power of 
Christian righteousness, which will lift the believing soul and 
the whole Church of Christ to a higher altitude of piety, and set 
them forward on more easy, rapid, and victorious waves of 
advancement than any experience of the past. Let us not 
measure our Christian expectations by the immobility of the 
land, but by the boundless, restless, mighty waves of the sea. 
Let us remember that Christian peace is that which Christ 



PEACE LIKE A RIVER. 411 

gives, that Christian righteousness is that which Christ pro- 
vides, and then you have expressed the whole, — it is illimi- 
table as the sea; it is fathomless as the deep; it is rich as the 
diversified treasures of earth ; it is mysterious as eternity ! 

And why should we repine at the mystery ? Why should we 
doubt the value of the gift because we know not all its secrets ? 
Why should we question the goodness of God, or the glory of 
His attributes, because He keeps back knowledge which is 
above our finite reach, but within His infinite competence? 
No one denies that the blood courses through arteries and 
veins, from the centre to the extremities, ceaselessly, uncon- 
sciously, mysteriously. No one denies that the lungs expand 
and collapse, inhale and throw out the air, draw from it oxygen 
and health; the fact is obvious; the force that does this work 
we call life, but the nature of that force is unknown ; yet no 
one stumbles on account of the mystery. No one denies the 
connection between brain and nerves, and the power of the 
mind which governs the muscles of the arm ; no one disputes 
the fact; no one explains it; and no one is made a scientific 
infidel by the mystery. But when we are told that the peace 
of God is incomprehensible, — that while we know something, 
yea, very much, of its certainty, beauty, grandeur, worth, yet 
it is a mystery, because the laws and results of it are not fully 
known; a mystery, because the natural mind discerneth not 
the things of the Spirit of God ; a mystery, because earth can- 
not comprehend heaven, any more than the hollow of the hand 
can hold the ocean. Then the caviling mind cries out, "Your 
religion is all a dream ; you acknowledge it is a mystery ; we 
pronounce it fanaticism and folly." Ah, my friends, if we were 
as great infidels in practical life, as we are in religion, many 
of us would neither eat, nor drink, nor breathe, nor sleep ; we 
should not allow our children to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep, 
till they had been to college and learned the profound phi- 
losophy of the largest science. And then, having attained 
the largest science, we should speedily die of starvation, or 
suffocation, or dungeon-darkness, or zero-cold; because, not 
having the full knowledge of the laws of light and heat 






412 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

and air and the assimilation of food, we would not receive any- 
blessing which was attended by a mystery. 

No, my hearers, I see no stumbling-blocks in the mysteries 
of religion, those benign and blessed truths of revelation, 
which are unfolding themselves more and more before the 
reason, leading the thoughts of man always up to God. I see 
no defect nor flaw attaching itself to the peace of God ; be- 
cause it is deeper than any sounding-line which we can drop 
into the sea ; wider than the sailing-course of any vessel of 
discovery which we can send out, searching after boundaries. 
Shall we reject the peace of God because we cannot explain 
all its laws and processes? I think we ought to judge as the 
Sultan of Turkey judged, when the mysteries of the galvanic 
battery and of Morse's telegraph were put before his mind. 
When Dr. Hamlin and Professor Smith showed him how the 
electric current must pass around in a certain, completed circle 
in order to magnetize the iron, he was at first greatly incredu- 
lous. Repeatedly and vainly he attempted to pass the current 
of electricity in a different way. With an eager curiosity, 
he asked them, " Gentlemen, what is the reason ? What is the 
reason ? " They told him it was an ultimate fact ; its cause 
known only to God; man could give no reason. He lifted 
both his hands in adoration, crying, " God only is great ! " 
Why are we more skeptical than that Mohammedan student? 
He did not deny the value of the electric telegraph bceause 
there was a wonder in it, nor refuse its message because he 
did not know how the message was transmitted. His thoughts 
and reverence were lifted up the more to God, because there 
was a mystery. Let us not reject the grace of Christ because 
it comes to us in an unexpected way. 

II. I turn to inquire, How is this peace to be obtained? 
The answer is in the text, " O that thou hadst hearkened to 
my commandments ! " 

1. One of God's commandments is, that we exercise 
faith. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." Faith is a 
personal appropriation of the merits and the blood of 
Christ. Of course, if the soul is crushed under the load 



PEACE LIKE A RIVER. 413 

of sin, and slain by the law, and fainting under a sense of guilt 
and helplessness, it will cling to the outstretched hand of 
Christ, and will adore His infinite mercy ; it will discover in 
Christ a remedy by which depravity may be healed, and sin 
may be conquered, and condemnation may be removed, and 
feebleness and doubt and dread overcome, and by which the 
whole pathway of life shall be attended by floods of peace. 
Christ is the Captain of our salvation ; made perfect through 
sympathy and through sufferings. He is the blessed Martyr 
of humanity ; He is the unerring Teacher of truth ; He is the 
conquering Prince of peace ; He is our expiatory Atonement ; 
He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. O that we 
might receive Him as our Prophet, who opens to us the 
heavenly doctrine; as our Priest, accepting His vicarious 
sacrifice ; as our Judge, calmly awaiting the verdict of the last 
day ; as our King, submitting the soul to His sovereignty ! He 
is the Ocean of love; O that we might sail on that expanse 
forever! He is the Author of peace; O that we might come 
to that Fountain, and launch upon that River, that rolls, ever- 
deepening, to eternity's broad sea! 

2. A second of God's commandments is, that we cherish a 
sense of individual responsibility. "Work out your own 
salvation with fear and trembling." For every person living, 
God has a special work to do, which no one can do for him, 
and which he cannot neglect without guilt. He must educate 
himself for his own particular profession and place ; and with- 
out his own free-will, his persevering toil, his concentration of 
mind, upon a definite end, he cannot be fit for that place. A 
young man may be the son of a college professor, and may be 
surrounded by the atmosphere of learning all his days ; he 
never will be a scholar without his own individual choices. 
No man is born a jurist, or a divine, or a manufacturer, or an 
engineer. A long process of culture, guided by the individ- 
ual's own determination, must lead him up to the position, and 
to the qualifications for it. No child is born a Christian. 
Neither child nor adult is carried to heaven in chariots of ease. 
There are here abundant opportunity and imperative demand 



414 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

for free-will. After all that we say, or can say, about the ab- 
solute necessity of Christ's atonement, and the divine efficiency 
of the Holy Ghost, no person ever became a Christian who did 
not wish to be a Christian, and who did not study and watch 
and strive and toil and pray to be a Christian. To sit down 
in passive indolence, and expect to go to heaven, is about as 
wise as to go on board a frail, open boat, without compass or 
chart or sail or oar or food, launch it in a storm, sit down con- 
tentedly on the thwarts, and expect to go to England. It is a 
great and critical work to be a Christian. It requires more 
harmony of the faculties, more sagacity of insight, more self- 
control and fixed determination at the helm, more self-renoun- 
cing approaches to Christ, more vigilant, anxious care, than 
any other mortal responsibility. It is a great and difficult 
work which the Christian has to accomplish for a perishing 
world around him ; and as well might you say that the lawyer, 
pleading in a capital cause, had no occasion to hold carefully 
the balances of equity; that a surgeon, cutting within a hun- 
dredth part of an inch to some vital artery, had no occasion to 
hold carefully the knife ; that the mother, watching over her 
babe, in the crisis of fever, had no occasion to be vigilant 
through the long night; as to say that the Christian, watching 
for souls, needs no discrimination nor spiritual culture for that 
solemn business. Of all men, he has most occasion to pray 
to God ceaselessly, Give me grace to love, give me wisdom to 
plan, give me ability to execute. 

Finally : Let me say, God's commandment is, that we cherish 
a decisive piety. " Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." 
There is no neutrality nor half-way service allowed in the 
spiritual kingdom of our Lord. If we are Christians, we have 
experienced the regeneration ; we have submitted the will to 
Christ ; we have made a whole-hearted consecration. The 
world does not need, just at present, any half-way Christians. 
It may be that in the millennial period, when there are no 
more sinners to be converted ; no more falsehoods to be re- 
sisted ; no more organized national evils, imbedded in the very 
constitution of society, to be extirpated, — it may be that 



PEACE LIKE A RIVER. 415 

then the half-way Christian will get along somewhat comforta- 
bly. His sluggish fulfilment of duty will not betray unhappy 
souls; his influence of eminent consecration will not be needed. 
Though even then we cannot see how he will be quite safe, 
or how he will be saved, except as by fire. For faith in Christ 
will be needed then ; and watchfulness and prayer will be indis- 
pensable; and self-denial and toil will be the only proof of 
love; and remains of apathy, unbelief, and sin will tempt, 
harass, torment that unfaithful soul. But now, when we have 
mountains of difficulty to overcome, and oceans of sorrow 
and trial to wade through, and dark clouds of infidelity hang- 
ing over the land, we see not how any hesitating and inde- 
cisive Christian can cherish any hope for himself. 

There is no Christian who has not, within the sphere of his 
personal and special influence, one or more individuals — it may 
be two or five or ten or twenty — who are swayed more largely 
by his example and opinions, than by those of any other per- 
son living. This Christian, to whom these souls are com- 
mitted for instruction, guidance, and persuasion, is a teacher 
in a school ; or is surrounded by a circle of brothers and sis- 
ters ; or is a member of some organized club and intimate fel- 
lowship ; or is a clerk in a circle of cheerful youth ; or is a 
valued associate in a large company of kindred ; and if he is 
faithful to his covenant-vows, his light will shine, beautiful and 
far, — like a star in the dark night, like a sun rising to its 
meridian. Only let him maintain a decisive faith, a symmet- 
rical, intelligent, thoughtful, well-established piety. 

This decision of mind will lead you to Christian perse- 
verance. Difficulties stand in the way of all duties, and he 
who expects to float down-stream, instead of rowing up the 
current, does not comprehend the first principles of salvation. 
I have read of an apostle who could say, "I know whom I 
have believed ; I have fought the fight, I have kept the faith, 
henceforth the crown." But it was Paul, the aged. He was 
near the crown; the battle lay behind him; the thunderings 
of the conflict, the shouts of the warriors, the moans of the 
wounded, the wail over the dead, the jubilee of the victors, 



416 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

were things of the past. So have I seen other gray-haired 
saints, venerable and beloved, worthy of all reverence and 
esteem, stand up upon the border and testify for Jesus. They 
had joy in God, they had joy in the sanctuary, they had joy in 
the communion of the church, they had joy in the mercy of 
Christ, they had joy in the fulfilment of duty. Conflict and 
doubt and fear and distress were things of the past, — shadows 
and memories, not realities. Their peace was as a river; their 
righteousness as the waves of the sea. We need this perse- 
verance ; we need a firm, courageous, persistent mind ; not 
fickle and hesitating, not vacillating and doubtful, but fortified 
by the truth of God, established by the experiences of the 
inward soul, led on from strength to strength, through the 
struggles and the changes of this mortal life, kept through 
faith, unto salvation, by the power of the Holy Ghost. 






THE BIBLE AS AN EDUCATING POWER. 

A SEBMON TO YOUNG MEN. 



[The accompanying sermon was preached in the John-street Church in June, 
1866 ; also in February, 1870 ; in the Worthen-street Methodist church, Lowell ; in 
West Newbury, Easthampton, South Hadley, Chicopee Falls, Westfield, South 
Church of Springfield, and Longmeadow, Mass., and in Dummerston, Vt. It ap- 
pears to have been prepared and first preached in West Springfield, Mass., in 
June, 1862. As it is here given it has been somewhat changed since its first 
writing. It was originally used in a course of sermons to young men. It is an 
admirable illustration of that remarkable flow of impassioned thought with 
which Dr. Foster used sometimes to bear his hearers on, as if swept forward by 
an overwhelming flood.] 

Psalms 119 : 9. — " Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way f 
By taking heed thereto according to Thy word." 

I. The Bible, as an educating power, prepares young men 
for the blessings of a competence. A competence ! The word 
describes one of the fondest dreams of the ardent mind, to 
which the young man looks forward with eager desire. A 
pleasant home, a comfortable property, a loving wife, a circle 
of sympathizing friends, opportunities of travel, still with that 
centre of the heart's affection and of the life's labors, clearer 
than all travels, books, newspapers, pictures, delights, flowers 
in the garden, pleasant objects in the lawn, a beautiful world 
on which to look when the eye wanders abroad, tranquillizing 
and elevating joys on which to rest when the weary feet return 
to their own garden gate. These are the fond and precious 
dreams of the young man's forecasting mind. I blame him 
not for cherishing the vision. God grant that his hope may 
be fulfilled ! But let him not forget nor scorn the true means 
of accomplishing his desire. Let him remember that the Bible 
is the foundation on which he must build his plans and his 



418 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

anticipations, or he builds a castle in the air, and his hopes and 
joys will erelong tumble in terrible ruin. 

The Bible, as an educating power, prepares young men for 
the blessings of a competence. It teaches the great, compre- 
hensive rules of profit and of loss. It does not sacrifice the 
body for the soul ; it does not overlook the interests of time 
for the sake of eternity. While it points the path of salva- 
tion for eternity and for the soul, it points the path of pros- 
perity for the whole of this mortal life. It inculcates industry, 
frugality, self-denial, and the admirable virtues which adorn 
the character of the man of business. It inspires the mind 
with activity and strength, purging away the mists of passion, 
removing the darkness of prejudice, giving keenness of in- 
sight, and patience of application, and profoundness of thought. 
It enlarges the field of vision, and brings all questions of secu- 
lar interest into their relation to future and spiritual results. 
It leads to the exercise of integrity, of that exalted, Christian 
integrity which counts poverty a far less evil than a stain upon 
honor, which regards sin as worse than death. 

I might select a Bible- taught youth, — a young man who not 
only reads the Bible, but prayerfully studies it and seeks to 
obey it, and then I might describe his business character. I 
might trace him through the paths of labor and accomplish- 
ment, of frugal self-denial and sagacious enterprise and inde- 
fatigable toil. I might show how the Bible relieves his 
perplexities, exalts his aims, and invigorates his arm. I think 
I could convince you that the Bible gives him a nobler plan of 
action, and power to execute that plan, — that it gives to him 
a symmetrical, well-balanced, and lovely character, and there- 
fore secures the confidence of his fellow-men ; that it hushes 
the tumultuous passions, thus bringing reason and impulse into 
sweet accord, and adding new and extraordinary force to the 
mind because the affections work in harmony with it. I could 
show how, under the agitations of opinion, and the stress of 
temptation, and the disappointments and sorrows of life, the 
mind, guided by faith, preserves its tranquillity and maintains 
its probity, so that surging billows, which carry other men off 



THE BIBLE AS AN EDUCATING POWER. 419 

their feet and leave them wrecked on the rocks of disaster, 
only drive his ark of refuge farther out into the deep blue sea, 
and farther on towards the haven of endless rest. 

Instead of describing the progress of the individual edu- 
cated by the Bible, rising in the scale of intellectual force, 
surrounding himself with all the blessings of a competence, 
let me describe a class. The life of a nation is longer than 
that of a man, and we can judge of the exaltation of a family 
through long generations, or of a people through Successive 
centuries, better than of an isolated individual. There are 
eight hundred millions of heathen souls in the world, and two 
hundred millions of nominal Christians. The eight hundred 
million heathen are sunk in barbarism ; they are ignorant in 
mind ; they are improvident as to the future ; they are indo- 
lent, sensual, sordid ; they are destitute of comforts. The two 
hundred million Christians are raised in the scale of civiliza- 
tion, more thoughtful, more diligent, more frugal, more wise, 
more self-controlled, in all the useful arts farther advanced, in 
all physical blessings more largely supplied. The pagan mind 
is stagnant as a dead sea, slimy as a putrid pool, poisonous 
as a malarious marsh, and all external tokens of unthrift and 
discomfort correspond. The Christian mind is awake ; it in- 
quires after the relations of cause and effect ; it investigates 
sciences ; it makes discoveries ; it brings in inventions ; it 
makes machinery do the work of human hands and almost the 
thinking of human brains ; it subsidizes Nature's forces and 
material laws, to the ends of utility ; it may increase the num- 
ber of human wants, but it multiplies a thousand-fold the 
amount of supplies ; it furnishes comforts, privileges, delica- 
cies, elegances, even luxuries, in exuberant abundance. That 
the Bible is the cause is just as obvious as that the sun is the 
source of light. The proofs are of the same nature. When 
the rays of the sun are absent, darkness comes, vegetation lan- 
guishes, life beats with slow and failing pulses ; bring back the 
beams of the sun, and all this decay and inactivity disappear. 
Precisely the same method of proof discloses the Bible's 
power. Its absence is followed invariably by mental and 



420 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

moral inefficiency, by commercial, agricultural, mechanical 
torpor. The facts admit of no dispute. Take the two coun- 
tries where the Bible is the most revered, England and 
America. What causes the busy and universal hum of indus- 
try, the rush of enterprise, the elevation of the masses ? What 
gives public order and general security? What scatters over 
the whole country cultivated fields, waving with grain, green 
hill-sides covered with herds and flocks ? What sets in motion 
the mechanical forces of the manufacturing village, and makes 
it the centre of trade for the entire country around, sending 
forth its fabrics to distant territories and foreign lands? 
What builds up the city, with its educated mind, its business 
talent, its accumulated wealth, its treasure-houses of goods 
from every clime, its powerful excitements applied to learning 
and art, its social refinements, its moral power ? What makes 
the city the great heart of the country around, pulsing its 
mighty flow of thought and principle and power, of education 
and politics and business, back and forth through all the veins 
and arteries of the land ? What makes the country the inex- 
haustible feeder of these central forces? You live in your 
ceiled and painted and carpeted houses, furnished with every 
necessity of life, decorated with every adornment of taste, 
when in pleasant homes of thoughtfulness and harmony, in 
quiet gardens of beauty and fertility, your lives pass away like 
a dream of the primeval paradise. Nowhere, except in homes 
based on the same Christian faith as exists in New England, 
can you find such delights as those which you experience, 
scattered through a community. Young men, it is unworthy 
your noble powers sluggishly to take these benefits and never 
to ask for the cause. It is the dictate of a narrow deduction 
and of a false philosophy, "to ascribe the blessing to any cause 
but one, and that is the ameliorating, civilizing, exalting influ- 
ence of the Bible. 

Macaulay says of England : — 

" The national wealth, during six centuries at least, has been 
almost uninterruptedly increasing. This progress, having con- 
tinued during many ages, became at length, about the middle 



THE BIBLE AS AN EDUCATING POWER. 421 

of the eighteenth century, portentously rapid, and has proceeded 
during the nineteenth with accelerated velocity. During a hun- 
dred years there has been in the island no tumult of sufficient 
importance to be called an insurrection. The law has never 
been borne down by popular fury or by regal tyranny. Public 
credit has been held sacred. Under the benignant influence of 
peace and liberty, science has flourished, and has been applied 
to practical purposes on a scale never before known. Could the 
England of 1685 be, by some magical process, set before our eyes, 
we should not know one landscape in a hundred, or one build- 
ing in ten thousand. The inhabitant of a town would not 
recognize his own street. Everything has been changed but 
the great features of Nature, an(i a few massive and durable 
works of human art. Many thousands of square miles which 
are now rich corn land and meadow, dotted with villages and 
pleasant country seats, would appear as marshes or wild fens." 

A still more remarkable progress and change have taken 
place within two hundred years in our own country. Our 
progress in wealth and thrift, in commerce and trade, in the 
products of the earth and the structures of the artisan, in 
mechanical ingenuity and manufacturing skill, has been with- 
out a parallel. The growth of England and America is not 
the result of any original superiority in science, or advantages 
of climate or of race. Greece and Eome were exalted in 
learning and genius and art, when our ancestors were barba- 
rians. Italy and Spain have more salubrious skies and more 
genial airs and a more exuberant soil than Great Britain or 
these Northern States. France has the Norman blood ; Ger- 
many has the Saxon energy ; and if qualities of race were to 
lead the world, they have as fair an opportunity as we. Other 
nations have mountains as sublime, lakes as beautiful, rivers as 
navigable, plains as fertile, forests as vast, mineral stores as 
rich, harbors as safe, fisheries as inexhaustible, facilities of 
travel and navigation as numerous, sites of cities as favorable, 
laborers as stalwart, governments as energetic as we. Where, 
then, is the wide distinction ? It is in the religious instruction 
and religious character of the people. It is in the all-pervad- 
ing and all-controlling influences which the Bible brings to 
bear upon mind and heart and life ; upon schools, society, gov- 



422 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

ernment ; upon the progress of science and the utilitarian 
results it secures. The progress of England and America in 
material welfare has corresponded exactly with the progress in 
biblical knowledge and biblical faith. The advancement or 
retrogradation in states and provinces, in families and commu- 
nities, in the energy of individual minds and, the prosperity of 
business men, has corresponded exactly with the progress or 
retrogression in Bible obedience. The proof is ample and 
irrefragable, that the Bible, as an educating power, prepares 
young men for the blessings of a competence. 

Shall we gather together, in this Centennial year, from all 
parts of -the land, rich and varied samples of our agricultural 
products, rare specimens of mechanical inventions and manu- 
facturing arts ; shall the country appropriate hundreds of acres 
of ground for their display, and tens of thousands of dollars ; 
shall we call hither the learned and the celebrated, governors 
of States, mayors of cities, orators of renown, judges and leg- 
islators, to rehearse the history of this material progress; shall 
newspapers send their skilled reporters from every village and 
city, in order to publish the story; shall this jubilee of agricul- 
ture and art awaken enthusiasm, hope, thanksgiving, joy, the 
wide land over, as an omen of future comfort and prosperity ; 
and shall we sit down blindly and stupidly ignorant of the 
cause of this abounding opulence, comfort, refinement, bless- 
edness? We trace the steamboat back to Fulton, the telegraph 
back to Morse, the sewing-machine back to Howe, the light- 
ning-rod back to Franklin, the building of this republic back 
to Washington and Adams, the victories of our war back to 
great statesmen and generals ; but we strangely and unbeliev- 
ingly fail to see that Christ is the Giver of our material bless- 
ings, and that the Bible is the educating power which leads on 
the whole grand procession. 

II. The Bible is adapted, beyond any power of human 
wisdom, or any device of human ingenuity, to instruct and 
exalt the mind. There is no other book of the world which 
will bear such repetition of study, such continuity, minuteness, 
profoundness of investigation. The minister preaches about 



THE BIBLE AS AN EDUCATING POWER. 423 

it, week after week, Sabbath after Sabbath, once or twice in 
the week, twice or thrice on the Sabbath, for thirty or forty 
or fifty years ; and his lessons of truth drawn from the Bible, 
are as fresh and interesting and subduing in his ripe and 
golden age, as in his vigorous and progressive youth. The 
Christian reads it morning, noon, and night, for seventy or 
eighty years ; it never wears out ; it never tires ; it is as dear to 
his heart in hoary age as in blooming childhood; it has more 
power to thrill him than any chains of demonstration, or any 
bursts of eloquence, or any beauties of poetry. The Sabbath- 
school class studies it together, one hour weekly, for five, ten, 
twenty years, and it has the highest charms of novelty, and 
the largest power of pathos, in the end as in the beginning. 
The theologian ponders upon it through all his life-time, seek- 
ing after the deep things of doctrine, and the high things of 
duty, and the beautiful things of privilege, striving to arrange 
them in true scientific relations, and to enforce them by im- 
pressive persuasions. No other single book of the world ever 
attracted the mind or rewarded study, as this Book does. 

And why ? Can we get at the secret of its power ? Can 
we persuade our youth, when there are newspapers on the 
right hand and on the left ; when there are novels in every 
library, and almost in every parlor; when there are books of 
science which demand their earnest thought; and books of 
poetry which kindle their imagination ; and books of history 
which thrill upon the human heart, — can we persuade them to 
take the Bible as a more alluring book than any other, to 
occupy more time, and to secure for them a better intellectual 
culture ? 

What is the secret of the Bible's power? We can ascertain 
some of the reasons, and some we must leave for the study of 
heaven. It is like the power of the ocean, beyond our fathom- 
ing-line ; like the power of Niagara, beyond our language or 
thought ; like the sublimity of the Alpine mountain, like the 
beauty of Scotland's friths, partly arising from the very mys- 
tery which enshrouds it. The Bible is peculiar in the structure 
of its language, employing words that are simple, perspicuous, 



424 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

energetic ; casting its thoughts into sentences and paragraphs, 
the most natural, the most beautiful ; adorning the clear and 
perfect argument with the most appropriate illustrations. 
There is an inimitable charm in well-selected words, arranged 
in skilful forms; they are like apples of gold in pictures of 
silver. In this respect, the Bible is inapproachable. No laws 
of the rhetorician, no sagacity of the poet, no power of the 
orator, can equal it. It is given by Him who made the mind, 
and who adapts His instruments to reach the mind. It is not 
the work of a novice, nor a bungler, nor a prentice-hand. It 
is the product of Him who understands the relations of thought 
to speech, and who uses human speech to accomplish the great 
objects of His love. It is therefore equally fascinating to the 
scholar and the child. The wayfaring man, though a fool, 
cannot easily miss its meaning; the deepest thinker, though 
skilled in all philosophy, cannot exhaust its inexhaustible rich- 
ness. Young men, who are at all ambitious of strength in 
debate, or conversation, or composition, of skill in scientific 
research, or argumentative power, will choose some model for 
their imitation. They study the speeches of Webster, or the 
essays of Story, or the political arguments of Burke, or the 
philosophy of Coleridge, or the great epic of Milton. This is 
well. But there is a more wonderful structure of language, 
there is a higher discipline of mind, there is a nobler pattern 
of eloquence and power, — you will find them all in the Bible. 
It is as if the angels were translating the thoughts of God; out 
of the dialect of heaven, into the vocabulary of earth ; and 
while you read and ponder, it is as if you were caught up with 
Paul into the third heavens, and saw indescribable glories 
and heard incommunicable words. 

When we penetrate beneath the language, and inquire after 
the thoughts of the Bible, we find the most remarkable com- 
bination of doctrine, precept, and promise, history of grand 
events, delineation of every-day life, pictures of nature, argu- 
ment that convinces, poetry that charms, pathos that melts, 
invitations that allure, and warnings that overwhelm. The 
doctrine brings before us the invisible, incomprehensible, 






THE BIBLE AS AN EDUCATING POWER. 425 

eternal God, — no longer a dim abstraction of the schools; no 
longer a senseless idol of the heathen ; no longer a vengeful 
Nemesis of the past, sitting on His cruel throne and hurling 
His inexorable darts; but our loving Father, our justifying 
Saviour, our tender Friend. We see Him in the clouds ; we 
hear Him in the winds ; we trace His pathway in the diversi- 
ties of nature and the dealings of providence ; we discover 
His interposition in the experiences of the life and the choices 
of the mind, — it is by the aid of the Revelation. The Bible 
presents the doctrine in perfect simplicity, and then uses, for 
its illustration and enforcement, history and biography, chan- 
ges of material and moral law, wonders of the physical crea- 
tion and of intellectual action. William Wirt was accustomed 
to say, "If you wish to strengthen your intellectual powers, 
read Locke on the Understanding." Lord Chatham, before 
he made a speech in Parliament, almost invariably read, a ser- 
mon of Dr. Barrow. It was said of John C. Calhoun, that 
he was perfectly familiar- with Edwards on the Will. Locke 
and Barrow and Edwards are wonderful for their linked logic 
and irrefragable argument, amounting almost to demonstra- 
tion. These strong men, Wirt, Chatham, Calhoun, read these 
authors for the sake of mental discipline. They loved to 
grasp the mighty cable of argument, and to be lifted up by its 
invincible power. But, ah ! young friends, the doctrines of 
the Bible are stronger than the arguments of men. The 
upper end of that supernatural chain is fastened to the eternal 
throne, and it comes down with its links and its ladder-steps, 
through all the heavenly glories, bringing down the voices and 
the riches of the skies, the thoughts and the purity and the 
bliss of paradise, to be the inheritance of men. 

I 'would recommend to those who seek for discipline of 
mind, to read the authors I have named. But Locke has his 
obscurities, and many a scholar gropes darkly in those pages ; 
Barrow has his fallacious reasonings, and some of his conclu- 
sions need to be rectified ; Edwards has his tendencies to 
fatalism, — but the Bible, the Bible, is without blemish or de- 
fect or flaw. No one who studies it attentively, can fail to 



426 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

receive new ideas of grandeur of style, and glory of doctrine, 
and wealth of instruction, and purity of life. His tastes will 
be refined, for all the inculcations of the Bible are bathed in 
the purity of heaven ; his intellect will be quickened, invigo- 
rated % expanded, for he looks upward to the central divine 
effulgence, the source of all light ; he launches out upon the 
infinite expanse of knowledge, as the eagle with unblenching 
eye gazes upon the sun, and with unfaltering wing rises upon 
the air. 

In describing the Bible as an educating power, quickening 
the mind, I might refer to the supernatural element, pervading 
it in every part, and distinguishing it from every other possible 
communication made to the mind of man. We inquire with 
an insatiable curiosity after the anticipations of the future; 
we search diligently after the memories of the past; we 
plunge eagerly into speculations about the hidden and the un- 
known. These three, domains of knowledge, the past, the 
future, and the unknown, are the object of most of our studies 
and researches. Confine the view to this little narrow present, 
to the outward, the visible, and the palpable, and man's aspira- 
tions after learning would soon die a^way. We are interested 
in the tradition and the legend, which carry us back to the 
olden time. We form a thousand plans, we indulge a thousand 
dreams, we cherish ten thousand hopes, which have no basis 
in present reality; their only dwelling-place is the uncertain 
future. We go sounding our dim and perilous way through 
the difficulties of science and providence, of civil administra- 
tion and human life. The scholar, more than other men, lives 
in the past and in the future. The stupid barbarian, the* 
absorbed worldling, the degraded sensualist, the imbecile idler, 
is satisfied with the present and the obvious ; the cultivated 
mind, more than all other minds, wanders beyond these boun- 
daries. Now, it is the supernatural element of the Bible which 
rouses the faculties and feeds the faculties that search after 
the past, the future, and the hidden. Hence the Bible stimu- 
lates the scholarly mind. Show me a mind that loves the 
Bible, and I will show you a reflecting mind ; show me a pro- 



THE BIBLE AS AN EDUCATING POWER. 427 

foundly meditative mind, and I will show you peculiar and 
strong affinities between that mind and Bible instruction. 

The reason is this : The Bible carries you back into the re- 
mote and hoary antiquity. Events shrouded in darkness, 
tossed backward and forward on the restless waves of conjec- 
ture, the theme of fabulous tales, stand before us in the Bible, 
clothed in perfect light, authentic, undeniable, the historic 
verities of the past. Then the Bible leads you forward on 
paths of prophecy, and paths of promise, and paths of revela- 
tion and of hope, where no cony's foot hath trodden, or 
eagle's eye hath glanced, — paths where no human strength can 
ascend the heights, or human wisdom can lead the way. It 
brings before you glory, honor, immortality. It reveals the 
infinitude of celestial joy and the darkness of endless despair. 
It shows you the fellowship of heaven, exalts you to com- 
munion with God, brings around you the society of angels, 
discloses to you the future recognition of the saints. It chases 
away the darkness in which a thousand problems of moral 
philosophy and social economy and personal obligation are in- 
volved. Questions of human rights and human duties ; of the 
family, the school, the church, the state; questions as to edu- 
cation, business, politics, salvation ; questions which have 
involved the world in interminable disputes, and which have 
perplexed a thousand anxious minds, are here solved. Thus it 
is that the Bible reveals to us the past, the future, and the un- 
known. It brings us into enchanted ground. The doctrine is 
authenticated by the miracle. The duty is enforced by won- 
ders and by signs, the evident work of a divine power. God 
is moving before us in His majesty and strength. God is lift- 
ing the curtain which hides His ineffable glory. God is inter- 
posing in man's extremity, and making it the grandeur of His 
own opportunity. God is authenticating His truth by such 
stupendous movements, that none but the blind of mind and 
the reprobate of heart can refuse to believe. Young men, 
there is no sublimity like that of the Bible to rouse your 
thought; there is no information like that of the Bible to 
recompense your study ; there are no angelic soarings of the 



428 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

reason, the imagination, the memory, the affections, or the 
will, like those which you reach when you rise on the wings of 
Bible thought and Bible trust. 

III. . The Bible, as an educating power, prepares young men 
for the responsibilities of the patriot. Never, in the history of 
the world, were young men called upon to consider more 
solemn questions than those now presented. The love of 
country, rising above the dim and hazy mists of mercenary 
calculation ; the love of freedom, exalted as the spirit that 
inspired the Scottish Covenanters and the Puritan Colonists ; 
the love of man, a sentiment which, in its true grandeur and 
diffusiveness, is second only to the divine benevolence ; the 
love of religion, an affection without which all other principles 
lack their vitalizing force, — these are the sentiments which 
alone can sustain the true Christian ; these are the motives 
which will give energy and invincibility to the j)atriot. But 
these high and inspiring motives come only from the study of 
the Bible. 

The Bible reveals the worth of the deathless soul, the capa- 
bilities of human nature, the interest of human life, and thus 
it dignifies all social and governmental relations. It exhibits 
man as the last and best creation of God, as purchased by the 
Redeemer's blood, as invited, notwithstanding his grievous and 
criminal apostasy, to return to the endearing relation of a child 
and the high prerogative of a king and a priest unto God. 
The Bible discloses the sacredness of law, the necessity of 
authority, the nature, the limitations, and the beneficent uses 
of government, and thus prepares young men for the exercise 
of loyalty, for the duties of the citizen, for the vast responsi- 
bilities which devolve upon them under republican forms. The 
Bible places the great doctrines of freedom and the inaliena- 
ble nature of human rights upon the only immovable founda- 
tion, declaring the accountability of all men to the same great 
principles of equity and of duty. The Bible uproots selfish- 
ness, and prepares men for all that is genial, generous, sympa- 
thetic, hospitable, philanthropic. The Bible unfolds to us the 
relation between present choices and future character, between 



THE BIBLE AS AN EDUCATING POWER. 429 

time and eternity, and shows us how the humble and sincere 
performance of duty here will lead to ineffable and endless 
glories hereafter. Thus the Bible prepares young men for the 
obligations of patriotism. Ah, ye eager, aspiring, energetic 
youth, it is not in the conclave of politicians, nor in the con- 
troversies of the newspapers, nor in the volumes of Kent, 
Madison, Marshall, Webster, Story, Sumner, — that you are to 
learn the lessons of patriotic devotion and of sublime heroism, 
so much as with your open Bible, in long-continued meditation, 
and on your knees in prayer. 

Probably no young man is fully aware of his vast and 
weighty responsibilities, as a citizen of this free land, in this 
critical hour, when all foundations are shaken. The triumphs 
of Liberty have been secured by incredible sacrifices and toils 
on the part of heroes who have died ; but Liberty is still in 
peril. Young friends, if ever men needed to be panoplied 
with the armor of faith, on the right hand and on the left ; if 
ever they needed a pentecostal baptism of love and a sound 
mind, of courage and a holy consecration, of spirituality 
that rises above time-serving views, and of righteous indigna- 
tion which will consume away from the land the sins that 
infest our borders, you need that heavenly immersion now. 
The Bible, with its exalting doctrines, its pure precepts, its 
inspiring examples, its sustaining promises, its eternal sanc- 
tions, must be your strength. 

Never, since the world was made, was there an hour more 
full of terrible things in judgment and in power, of wonderful 
things in wisdom and in love ! A republic is to be saved ; a 
nation is to be redeemed ; false doctrines of government, per- 
verse misconstructions of liberty and of right, are to be extin- 
guished. God calls upon you to stand in your lot and do your 
duty. It is the hour and the power of Satan, of bewilder- 
ing fallacies, of theories suicidal to states, murderous to 
souls, and offensive to Goa. You •must meet them and sup- 
press them with a wise and earnest mind. Patriotism and 
religion and manliness call you ; all voices of love, and testi- 
monies of faith, and principles of self-respect summon you. 



430 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



Count not your life, nor any of the privileges of life, dear unto 
you, for you strike for the heavenly glory, you strike for the 
freedom of all the future ages. You need to fire the soul 
with indomitable ardor, to gird yourselves for achievement, to 
arouse every sympathy and hope and resolve. Believe me, 
youthful patriots, beloved and trusted, you cannot be equal to 
your duties without the study and love of the Bible. The 
missionary leaves home and friends, education and privi- 
leges, ease and comforts, the sweet sound of the church-going 
bell and the loved voices of song and prayer, that he may 
suffer, and, if God appoint, may prematurely die for heathen 
souls. You have dangers, toils, sufferings as great, and an 
aim of equal sublimity. You need the same spirit of apostolic 
zeal, of unflinching consecration, born of faith, nourished by 
Bible-food. There is in Boston Harbor a reef of rocks, a 
narrow, obscure, and hazardous strait, called "The Graves." 
There is in the harbor of New York a similar channel of 
peril and fear, called " Hell Gate." What should you think of 
the untaught, unthinking, reckless sailor, who should drive his 
hapless vessel, without a pilot, direct upon those rocks? 
His presumption would be small, compared to yours, if you 
attempt to navigate through the perils of this mortal life, 
without the guidance of God's infallible Word. You are 
already among the breakers, and you know not where the deep 
current leads. Storms are over your head; lightnings gleam; 
thunders reverberate ; the tornado is saying, " Sail by the 
Bible, or you go down in the whelming waves ; your souls are 
lost ; and the Republic is a shattered wreck ! " 



THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN. 



[This sermon was preached in the John-street Church in July, 1870. To those 
who are bereaved in Dr. Foster's death, it comes as a voice from the grave to 
give them comfort.] 

Num. 23:10. — " Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my 
last end be like his." 

A great and peculiar interest gathers around the death-bed 
of the Christian. Some of the most thrilling, searching, sub- 
duing appeals ever made to the consciences of men, suggesting 
to them their privilege, admonishing them of their duty, ex- 
horting them to its performance, have been grounded upon 
these death-bed scenes. Here piety has been seen in its tran- 
scendent beauty, and Christ has manifested himself to the soul 
in His divine and adorable strength. Who does not draw near 
with reverent mien and throbbing heart to the couch of the 
patriarch Jacob, as he gathered his feet into his bed, and be- 
stowed his blessing upon his sons, and with prophetic vision 
foretold their character and their fate? Who does not un- 
cover his head and look on with moistened eye while Stephen, 
the first martyr, fainting under the murderous blows of his 
enemies, bends upon his tottering knees, with palms out- 
spread in forgiving supplication, and with face shining like that 
of an angel, cries, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"? Who does 
not read the annals of other martyrs, the early and the later, and 
wonder and adore, while he marks their fortitude and faith in 
the dark hour of persecution, their forgiveness of their ene- 
mies, their devotion to Christ, and their calm and holy triumph 
when perishing in the flames ? Who can read the story of 
Payson's death, or Evarts' death, without a quickened pulse 



432 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 






and the falling tear ? They tarried for a season in the atmos- 
phere and the light of Beulah, — they had visions of glory, 
and their example shows us what we may anticipate and enjoy, 
in some measure at least, if we are followers of those who 
through faith and patience inherit the promises. I propose to 
consider some of the characteristics of the Christian's death, 
and, — 

I. I notice some of those features which are common to 
him, with other men, and which render death an event to be 
dreaded. And, 

II. Some of those peculiarities of his death, which make it 
a scene of triumph and of joy, and an event greatly to be 
desired. 

There are distressing features accompanying even the Chris- 
tian's death, which trouble the mind, and which cause Us to 
shrink back with apprehension and dread. 

1. The Christian's death is not free from physical debility 
and pain. Sickness entails upon him its accustomed suffer- 
ings, — faintness, languor, restlessness, distress. Faith will 
quiet his mental agitations, piety will soothe his spiritual an- 
guish, the love of Christ will sustain his sinking soul, but it will 
not arrest the convulsions of expiring nature, nor mitigate the 
pangs of the dying strife. Death, in itself considered, is to 
all an event to be dreaded. We shrink from death with an 
instinctive and natural fear. We hold on to this mortal 
breath with a close and unyielding tenacity. All that a man 
hath will he give for his life. Death brings to all a great and 
fearful shock. It effects a total revolution and change in our 
mode of being. It quenches the vital spark, — that mysterious 
principle of life, which no human sagacity can explain, which 
no human power can kindle ; that wonderful source of ac- 
tivity which keeps all the springs and wheels and varied and 
complex machinery of this mortal frame in play ; that accom- 
paniment, if not cause, of intellectual improvement and of 
genuine delights. The separation of soul from body cannot 
take place without more or less of reluctance and resistance, 
and even of agony. The agonies of the dying are in part ob- 









THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN. 433 

vious to survivors, but in part they are not seen by us, they can- 
not be described to us, and they must remain incomprehensible 
to us, till we know for ourselves what it is to die. The pains of 
death have been portrayed in graphic terms, — the imagination 
of the poet has often wrought the scene into his most moving- 
passages, — but the reality will go beyond all the pictures of 
fancy, and will impart to us views of the greatness and the 
wonderfulness of the change, of which we had known nothing 
before. 

Now, the Christian, I repeat, has no right to anticij^ate de- 
liverance from this pain. He may be calm in the sense of 
forgiven sin ; he may cherish perfect trust in an Almighty 
Redeemer, so far as peace of mind can alleviate bodily anguish ; 
he may look for exemption; his tranquillity of soul may enable 
him patiently to bear, and even triumphantly to forget, his 
sufferings ; but the agonies of death are not remitted for his 
sake. Disease pales his cheek, exhausts his strength, wastes his 
frame, pierces him with pangs of keen distress, as in the case 
of other men. 

2. The death of the Christian is surrounded by the sorroio 
and pain of parting with beloved friends. It sunders the ten- 
derest ties; it cuts off long-cherished and fondly-cherished 
associations ; it arrests in their full flow a current of recollec- 
tions and hopes and joys, which can be repeated no more on 
earth, and pours them back a refluent tide upon the aching 
heart, with force to drown us in floods of anguish ; it wounds 
the deepest and purest sensibilities of our nature. The relig- 
ion of Christ is here our only consolation. If we have known 
the joys of Gospel faith, if we have tasted the preciousness of 
immortal hopes, if we have given ourselves into the hands of 
Jesus, and have evidence that our friends are safe in the ark 
of the Lord, we can bear up under the anguish of separation, 
but the anguish itself is not diminished. 

The Christian, as he has known the love of Christ, and has 
partaken of His Spirit, cherishes a more profound and un- 
changing affection for his fellow-men than others. He esti- 
mates the grandeur of mind, the worth of character, the 



434 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

beauty of affection, by a new standard; he is prepared to 
enjoy the privileges and fulfil the duties of friendship ; he 
admires the wisdom of God which is seen in man's social con- 
stitution and social relations ; he acknowledges with devout- 
est gratitude the divine beneficence which has ordered our 
interdependence of interests, and our intermingling of sympa- 
thies, which has taken us from our isolated and solitary selfish- 
ness, and set us in families, and bound us to circles of kindred, 
and placed our happiness in the keeping of neighbors, and 
confederated us into states, and created obligations corres- 
ponding to our social connections, and made us to know how 
dear and how valuable are the claims of friendship and of 
love. The Christian adores that matchless grace which in- 
spires the heart with kindness and generosity, and renders the 
fellowship of the holy, blissful and eternal. Religion renders 
no man sour, or morose, or misanthropic. It acts upon the 
Christian with a refining, humanizing power, softening that 
which is harsh, removing that which is selfish, and qualifying 
him to seek for the happiness of friends and to rejoice in 
their affection. 

When such an one dies, the pangs of separation from beloved 
friends must be keen, and were it not for divine alleviations, 
the anguish of the last adieu would be unendurable. He is a 
Christian, and he leaves his friends with God, — this is his 
solace ; he is a Christian, and he trusts that the dear friends 
whom he leaves behind will repent of sin and believe in Jesus, 
and that through His regenerating grace they will be made 
holy and prepared for Heaven ; and therefore he anticipates a 
future meeting and blissful association with those from whom 
he is now parted, — this is his joy and strength. But, apart 
from these consolations, his last farewell is frequently the 
most sorrowful and affecting which earth can know. The 
death of the Christian may bring severe calamities upon dear 
survivors; the influence of the Christian is one which the 
world can but ill spare; his loss will produce a chasm in 
circles greatly bereaved, a vacuum in hearts desolate and 
bleeding ; he may die in the prime of life, his labors suddenly 



THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN. 435 

arrested, his plans of business unaccomplished,- his hopes of 
comfort unfulfilled, the education of dear dependent ones 
broken off, and they may be left to meet adversity's frown, to 
pine in destitution, and to live on for months and years, bereft 
of privileges once theirs, deprived of joys which had been 
their treasure, in broken-hearted yet uncomplaining sadness. 
To leave them thus must strike a bitter pang to his heart, 
even while he bows submissively to the Divine will. 

3. The death of the righteous may be sudden and unex- 
pected, and therefore painful. No doubt the good man is less 
exposed to the sudden attack of violent disease than other 
men. He does not violate thoughtlessly and recklessly the 
rules of moderation ; he does not live for the indulgence 
of appetite and the pleasures of sense ; he does not throw the 
reins upon the neck of his passions and let them drive him the 
devious road to death ; he does not rush rashly and without 
cause into circumstances of danger; — he exercises wisdom 
and forethought, and provides, so far as possible, for the peril 
which must arise. When disease, or pestilence, or casualty 
comes, he is not filled with dismay and torn with remorse and 
overwhelmed with forebodings, but he meets the danger calmly, 
believing in an overruling Providence, trusting in a merciful 
God, and is not agitated with excessive fears, nor disqualified 
from taking suitable precautions. And yet he is exposed to 
unforeseen and premature death. The shaft is often sped 
from an invisible bow, and no sagacity of his can ward off the 
inevitable stroke. 

It is sometimes said that if the laws of life were understood 
and obeyed, all men, extraordinary accidents excepted, would 
live to old age, and die at last because life was worn out, and 
the alarming, fatal progress of diseases would be ended. There 
is ground enough, unquestionably, to reprove the excesses and 
the imprudence of men, and to deplore the prodigality with 
which life is thrown away. But it does not appear that any 
plan of wisdom has ever been devised, or can be devised, 
which will infallibly prolong the life of man. It does not 
appear that those whose sagacity has been most undeniable, 



436 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



and whose precautions have been most abundant, and around 
whom favoring circumstances and providential helps have 
gathered most thickly, have obtained a certain guaranty of 
life. It does not appear that those who are so incredulous of 
a Divine providence, and who talk so much of the uniform 
•laws of life, and of man's mastery over his own fate, are 
any more likely to live long, or live happily, than others. 

God, for important moral ends, has made the life of all men 
uncertain. Brevity and insecurity are written on all our earthly 
possessions, on all hopes and joys which have for their basis a 
protracted life, and it is in vain for us to seek to alter that decree. 
God designs to teach us that this world is not fitted to be our 
abiding dwelling-place, that the gifts of this world are not 
fitted to feed the hunger of the immortal soul, but that we are 
called upon to seek a nobler and more enduring treasure. We 
have here no continuing city. Everything reminds us, — the 
passing hearse, the weekly record of mortality, the sick- 
nesses which waste our strength, the bereavements which leave 
us alone, the baffled plans, the disappointments of life, the 
flower of spring withering ere noon, the glories of summer 
fading and gone, the autumn leaf, the desolations of winter, 
— that we, too, are passing away. 

For some reasons, the earnest, devoted Christian is more 
liable to an early and sudden death than other men. He is 
called upon to perform the work which God assigns him, 
though at the cost of toil and weariness, of peril and self- 
sacrifice. He is to live for others, not for himself. He is not 
to count his life dear unto him, if he may glorify God by 
recommending His truth, and by winning souls to Christ. He 
has a higher end before him than length of days or personal 
ease. Duty requires him to wear out, if need be, or at any 
rate to allow no rust to gather upon his faculties. He is bound 
sometimes to meet exposures, to engage in strenuous labors, to' 
endure distracting cares, to bear the burden of heavy respon- 
sibilities, where other men might hold themselves excused. 
David Brainerd and Henry Martyn, if they had lived for 
health, and consulted comfort, and restrained their zeal for 



THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN. 437 

Christ and for souls, would in all human probability have 
doubled the length of their lives. The Christian, if faithful, 
may die somewhat earlier, and somewhat more suddenly, than 
the man who consults simply and only the teachings of medical 
science. Like Whitefield or Chalmers, he may strain the powers 
of mind and body to their utmost tension, so that the silver 
cord shall be snapped in a moment. But this does not prove 
that he has been unwise, or that his life has been thrown 
away. We are to measure our lives by deeds, not years. 

" That life is long which answers life's great end." 

4. The death of the Christian is sometimes shrouded in 
spiritual darkness, and therefore painful. It is not desirable 
that any should imagine that a death-bed scene furnishes the 
chief evidence of piety, and God may see fit to withhold from 
those whose lives have borne the most decided testimony to 
the power of His grace, this last attestation. We may cherish 
a strong desire to die in the exercise of a triumphant, over- 
coming faith, and in rapture of joy; but it is a privilege 
which has often been denied to eminent believers. Delirium 
may supervene and destroy all coherent thought and conscious- 
ness of approaching death. Weakness of body, and the dis- 
traction caused by pain, may prevent long-continued reflection 
and the deliberate, collected expressions which denote a full, 
unclouded triumph of the mind. When the mind has full 
possession of itself, and when the life has been distinguished 
for holiness, the death is not always triumphant. Such is the 
sense of personal unworthiness, and so lively is the remem- 
brance of shortcomings, and so profound is the conviction of 
sin, that often all the anxious soul can do, is doubtingly to trust 
and. tremblingly to hope. I know not that history records 
an instance of a consistent, praying Christian, brought to the 
hour of death, and then left to utter desolation, anguish, and 
despair. Death-beds of unspeakable horror have occurred, but 
they were not those of penitent believers in Christ. Sometimes 
the righteous die with heaven full in view, and with large and 
wonderful antepasts of its bliss in the soul; but more often 



438 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



they have no elation of mind, no ecstatic joy, but renouncing 
self, their song is all of grace ; letting go their hold of the 
world, they cling to the Redeemer's hand, and with a calm 
and humble trust, in unbroken serenity they await their 
change. Such a death-bed as this may not be all that we 
could desire for ourselves or for our friends ; but to those who 
appreciate calm thoughts, simple faith, a composed and serious 
and tranquil frame, it is exceedingly gratifying and cause for 
profound thanksgiving. Contrast this death-bed with that of 
infidel philosophers in their most cheerful moods, and how far 
do the triumphs of faith exceed the attainments of human 
reason ! Look at Hume, the cool, resolved skeptic. How 
puerile were his jests; how incongruous, his laughter; how 
clearly were his witticisms far-fetched and insincere ; how 
labored his attempt to conceal the workings of a disturbed 
and anxious mind ! Look at Mirabeau, the French atheist, the 
renowned orator, suddenly seized with death-pangs at his 
midnight revels, carried home in dreadful agony of body, and, 
with unnatural glee in the intervals of his spasms, exhorting 
his friends to flood his room with sunshine, to crown his head 
with flowers, to fill the apartment with perfumes, to surround 
him with songs of melody, and to let him die with these 
delights of sense engrossing his thoughts. 

II. I come now to describe some joyful characteristics. 
The death of the righteous is to be desired, — 

1. Because it closes forever the conflict with sin. This life 
is one constant struggle with spiritual foes, and the more 
holy the life, the more intense the conflict. There is a joy of 
victory which is deep and satisfying, more full of rapture than 
the joy of any placid, uneventful life, where no foes have been 
met, no battles fought, no "triumphs won. There is a virtue, 
an energy, a holy steadfastness developed, in the case of him 
who has been tried and found faithful, who has met temptation 
and overcome it, who has been called to difficult duty and has 
accomplished it, not possible in one who has never passed 
through a similar ordeal. When the world has been vanquished 
and self has been subdued ; when all the wiles of Satan, and 



THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN. 439 

all the subtleties of error, and all the waywardness of the heart 
have been resisted, a lofty and intense joy results from that 
conscious victory. But so long as we mingle in the busy 
scenes of life, and are under these laws of probation, what- 
ever victories are accomplished, the battle must again be 
fought, and the victory won again. We cannot lay our armor 
down, we cannot remit our vigilance and care, or sing the con- 
queror's song, until life is done, and the enemy is finally and 
forever defeated. 

Now, whatever the joy of victory, it is a source of larger joy 
to know that the strife is ended, and the contest never can be 
renewed. And this is the Christian's joy in death. He can 
say with the exulting Paul, " I have fought the fight, I have 
finished my course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is 
laid up for me a crown of joy which fadeth not away." He 
remembers the dangers through which he has passed; he 
trembles as he reviews the number and the magnitude of his 
perils ; he renders thanks to God for his wonderful escapes ; he 
adores that watchful Providence which has carried him 
through. His thoughts of wonder and admiration, and of 
gratitude, are heightened by the power of contrast. The day 
is more beautiful after the night ; the sunshine is more pleasant 
after the storm ; the sense of rest is enhanced by fatigue ; the 
value of health is appreciated when recovering from sickness > 
— so the Christian, when drawing near to death, recalls the 
horrible pit and the miry clay ; the weary path and the failing 
strength ; the tumult of the steady fight ; the subtlety and 
hatred of spiritual foes; the fierceness and terror of their 
blows ; the by-paths into which he was liable to wander ; the 
seducing voices which allured him away from duty ; the Slough 
of Despond ; the Doubting Castle ; the Hill Difficulty ; the 
bowers of ease ; the lions in the path ; the glozing tempters ; 
the mocking fiends ; — he remembers them all, and the wonder- 
ful deliverances vouchsafed to him by boundless grace. He 
stands on the Delectable Mountains, and heaven is in view. 
The past is a pledge for the future. He has a conscious sense 
of pardon. He is filled with peace and thankfulness and 



440 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 









joy. That God, who has guided him so long, will guard him 
still. That Saviour, who has succored him so long, will not 
forsake him now. If, amid all the disadvantages of this mor- 
tal life, he has come off conqueror, surely in another and purer 
world he shall be conqueror still, or rather be shall cease from 
strife and enjoy forever the fruits of victory. To die with 
such an assurance is ample recompense for all the toils which 
have been encountered, for all the anguish which has been 
endured. 

2. The death of the Christian is to be desired, because it 
brings to him enlargement of mind. Here thought is feeble, 
the judgment is fallible, knowledge is limited, conjecture is 
substituted for accurate information, prejudice takes the place 
of calm reasoning, too often specious delusions are welcomed 
as if they were unchanging truths. In this state of mental 
darkness we all wander for a time, and unless our understand- 
ing has been illuminated by the Divine Spirit, and our hearts 
regenerated by Divine power, we stumble at noonday, and 
stumble on till death. Even those who study with candor and 
prayer, and who have been taught of God, are distressed by 
the incompetency of their minds and by the frequency of their 
mistakes. We have in the processes of reason, and the testi- 
monies of conscience, and the Word of God, clear and full 
intimations of our duty and our privilege. And yet we are 
slow to learn and slow to love. Darkness hinders our per- 
ceptions of truth, faithlessness hinders our realization of privi- 
lege. We grope as in the twilight, we encounter innumerable 
surprises and difficulties, we find ourselves enveloped in mys- 
tery and doubt. 

But death terminates all this. Often the Christian is con- 
scious of a decided and rapid growth of knowledge as life 
draws to a close. The flesh faints and sense grows dim, 
but thought is roused, and the intellect waxes stronger and 
stronger. The lamp of life is feeble and low, and flickers in 
the socket, but the light of the soul comes out from its eclipse? 
breaks forth from the clouds, and is ascending, undeniably, 
like the rising sun, towards perfect day. What a pledge is 



THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN. 441 

this of an immortal and blessed existence, of progress in 
knowledge, of victory and joy and strength ! 

3. The death of the Christian is greatly to be desired, be- 
cause it removes all hindrances to successful action. How 
many impediments stand in the path of the regenerate, as- 
piring spirit here below! The world of matter around us, 
with its appeals to sense, with its pre-occupations of mind, 
with its absorbing power over the heart, is a darkening cur- 
tain between us and God, shutting out the face of our 
Redeemer and the light of heaven. These bodies are often 
a fetter upon the free spirit, chaining us down to inferior wants 
when we would fain rise to spiritual and improving contempla- 
tions, hanging like a clog upon the spirit, and holding us back 
in a lingering walk, when we desire to run the Christian race. 
How much of our time is seemingly wasted and lost; how 
much of it consumed in sleep ; how much of it to recruit the 
feebleness of the exhausted frame ; how much of it in the rest- 
lessness of protracted sickness ; how much of it by those ten 
thousand trivialities and interruptions of this mortal life which 
cannot be avoided, which are a part of our discipline, but which 
will not trouble us in heaven. I refer not here to the in- 
dolence of mind, and the reluctance of spirit, and xhe pre- 
dominant worldliness and unbelief which prove such a temp- 
tation and hindrance to the unrenewed, for I am speaking of 
the truly regenerate Christian. And yet even in his case, how 
often and how mournfully does sin obstruct his efforts and 
thwart his plans ; how often does it draw him aside, with a 
marked and melancholy deflection, from the path of duty; 
how often does it retard him in his progress ; how often 
is the Christian called to chide himself for remissness, 
inefficiency, failure ; how often is he called to lament the cold- 
ness of his love, the weakness of his faith, the feebleness of 
his attainments! Like the imprisoned bird beating his wings 
against the bars of his cage, looking out upon the bright sun, 
the green fields, the free air, and longing to be enfranchised 
that he may stretch his wings at will, — the Christian feels the 
restrictions which gird him around and hedge him in ; he looks 
29 



442 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



off from the mount of promise upon yonder land of liberty 
and of light, the Canaan of his love, and he yearns with an 
inexpressible desire to range those blessed fields. The late 
Professor Stuart was accustomed to say that he was able to 
study only three hours in the twenty-four. Three hours a day 
was all the time he could give to close, concentrated, severe 
application of mind, without bringing on permanent prostra- 
tion of strength and debility of thought. If three hours a day 
are the limit of intellectual toil for such an eager and conse- 
crated spirit as his, will it not be to such an emancipated soul 
a joy when he can study all the hours of the twenty-four, 
all the years of a long eternity ? 

4. The death of the righteous is to be desired, because it 
introduces to the blessedness of heaven. 

What is heaven ? It is the recognition of friends. Our 
social affections, if they are sanctified, become to us the sources 
of some of our most valuable and exquisite joys. A balm 
in sorrow here, a quickener in duty always, a guard against 
temptation, they are to be expanded, purified, and perfected 
hereafter. Tender and precious ties are sundered here, leaving 
memories which cannot be forgotten, and an aching void in 
the heart which will not cease to bleed, but the riven fellow- 
ship shall be restored. 

What is heaven? It is not only the recognition of de- 
parted friends, but it is an introduction to all the saints. 
Then shall we talk with Abel and Enoch and Noah; with 
Miriam and Hannah and Ruth; with Peter and Paul; with 
Luther and Calvin and Edwards ; with Davies and Brainerd 
and D wight. And then, too, shall we talk with those little 
children whom we have loved, whose names are not emblazoned 
on earth's history, but are written high on heaven's page. Did 
not David mourn for his babe with an anguish which for many 
days and nights could not be comforted? Did not the Shu- 
namite woman, lamenting for her dead boy with a heart full 
of unutterable emotion, still exclaim, It is well with the child ? 
Did not Luther sit in speechless sorrow over the coffin of his 
babe ? Did not Thomas Scott bury his heart in the grave of 



THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN. 443 

his little girl? Did not Leigh Richmond, in a flood of tears, 
lay the lad whom he had given up to God, beneath the sod ? 
Did not all these mothers and fathers, after looking their last 
upon the dear child of their affections, hide thenceforward an 
undying memory in their hearts, and carry a silent grief in 
their bosoms, down to their own grave ? Their hopes were 
broken; their joys were quenched; their plans of holiest 
sympathy and tenderest co-operation in this weary pilgrimage 
were baffled, — how great the vacancy, how deep the sorrow, 
on account of the loss of the child, it were vain to attempt to 
tell. It will be a pleasure to see those children, and take them 
by the hand, and hear them tell their story of redemption. 

Heaven has some pleasures which earth can only dream of. 
Heaven is not a shadow nor a vapor ; it is the genuine excel- 
lence of earth perfected. Our rational human faculties will 
then be cultivated to a higher tone, and our pure and gentle 
human sensibilities will then be strengthened. JSTo lofty 
thought, no generous affection, will be exterminated. It will 
be a scene of renewed acquaintance, of mutual converse, 
mutual instruction, mutual love, and thus our enjoyments 
will be exalted and made eternal. 

What is heaven? It is communion with Christ. Let it 
not be forgotten, when we refer to the joy which will result 
from the recognition of friends, that there is a joy more exalted 
and more ecstatic even than this. It will be the chief happi- 
ness of the redeemed saint to meet bis redeeming Lord. 
Before the unveiled brightness of the throne of God, the soul 
just released from earth could hardly stand. The transcendent 
glory would occasion a surprise which finite powers could not 
bear. It would be too great a contrast, to pass from the dim- 
ness of earth to the splendors of the throne, from the imper- 
fections of this mortal state to the ineffable wonders and 
grandeurs. Angels, therefore, meet the soul on the border as 
willing convoys to the throne. There, on that throne, sits the 
Lamb once slain, and the ransomed spirit meets a brother; 
there is a silvery cloud over the insufferable brightness; 
there is a human tone in that welcoming voice ; there is the 






444 MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 

print of thorns on that august brow ; there is a softening of 
the indescribable majesty, else would the trembling soul shrink 
back, saying, It is a sublimity more than I can bear, it is a 
contrast which astounds and overwhelms. Here, in the wel- 
come of Christ, the whisper of redeeming love mingles with 
the grandeur of universal authority and omnipotent power, 
and thus the wonders of divinity are accommodated to the 
feebleness of humanity. Thus are we to be introduced to the 
presence of God. Here we see Him through a glass darkly, — 
there shall we be folded in His very embrace ; here our eye is 
dim, — there, with open and clarified vision, every film removed, 
every obstruction taken away, shall we look upon the face of 
the Infinite. In this world, under the weight of these incum- 
brances and disabilities, the sight of God is sometimes over- 
powering, as when Moses was hid in the cleft of the rock, 
or Elijah stood in the mouth of the cave ; as when Peter 
beheld his Lord on the mount of transfiguration, or John On 
the lone isle of Patmos, or Edwards walking in the fields, or 
Payson launching on the shoreward waves of the eternal sea 
of bliss. But O ! to see Him as He is, with the intellect and 
heart and will prepared, lifted up upon the atmosphere of 
heaven, illuminated by the light which shines in that centre of 
all effulgence; to see and comprehend the adorable Trinity, 
which Melanchthon spoke of as one of his most cherished 
anticipations ; to see Him whom, not having seen, we love, — 
in whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, we 
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, — to see Him 
thus, and partake of His love, will be bliss indeed. Thus will 
the solitude of earth be lost in celestial society ; thus will the 
decay of the body be swallowed up in eternal victory; thus 
will the sting of sin and death be taken away. And this is 
the felicity into which the Christian enters at death. " Let 
me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like 
his." 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Academies in comparison with high 

schools, 41 

Accidents, 98 

Actresses, 170 

Adam's sin, our relations to 179 

Adams, Rev. Dr. E. E. 126 

Pres. John 279 

Pres. John Quincy 212, 279 

Rev. Dr. Nehemiah 103 

Address at Dartmouth College, 93 

bv Ex Governor Bullock, 126 

Afflictions, 197 

uses of 221 

Agassiz, Louis 384 

Age, changes produced by 17 

peculiarities of the ' 170 

Age, old 311 

autumn a symbol of 96 

joy of 108 

beauty of 408 

not always to be secured, 435 

Aims in life 136 

Alexander, Rev. Dr. Archibald 198 

Prof. J. Addison 341 

Alford, Henry, Dean of Canterburv,186 

Allen, Dr. Nathan " 190 

Andover Theological Seminary, 

37, 59, 228 
Appeals to the impenitent, 47, 75, 171 
Assembly, General, of Presbyterian 

Church, 50 

Association, Ministerial 159 

Assurance of hope, 123, 133 

Atlantic Cable, 89 

Authority of the preacher's message, 342 
Autumn, a symbol of old age, 96 

Bacon's Essays, 302 

Bagg, J. Newton, letter from 141 

Barnes, Rev. Albert 244, 341, 408 

Barrett, Hon. James 34 

letters from 34, 94 

Barrows, Rev. Dr. C. D. 222 

Bartlett, Rev. Dr. S. C. 192 

letter from 27 

Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward 103, 165, 354 

his first book 302 

Rev. Dr. Lyman 81, 149, 341, 405 

Berkeley, Bishop 256 

Berry, Rev. Augustus, letter from 63 
Berzelius, 284 

Bible-class, how conducted, 25 



PAGE 

Bible in the schools, 376 

attractive to the scholar, 426 

educating power, an 417 

mental stimulus of 425 

revelations of 427 

source of literature, the 293 

supernatural element in 426 

trains for patriotic duties, 428 

Birth of boy announced, 60 

Biography, 296 

charms of 182 

of good men, 193 

religious 88, 91, 217 

Blaine, James G. 195 

his eulogy of Garfield, 227 

Blanchard, Rev. Dr. Amos 

48, 70, 164, 190 
Blessedness of the ministry, 

45,51, 120,184 

Boarding one's self in college, 28 

Books, influence of certain 302, 425 

read by great men, 253 

list of, to read, 60, 160, 233 

of power, 425 

Bouton, Rev. Dr. 48, 81 

Braddock, Gen. E. 366 

Breckenridge, Drs. Robt. and Wm. 51 

Brook, description of a 178 

Brooks, A. L. 153, 171, 202 

Rev. Dr. Phillips 214 

Preston A. 71 

Brother, influence of a 22, 23 

Brown, John 174 

raid of 72 

Bryant's Thanatopsis, 228 

Buchanan, Pres. James 212 

Budgett, Samuel 192 

Bullock, Ex-Governor 126 

Burnell, K. A. 149 

Burroughs, Rev. Dr. Eden 13 

Butler, Benjamin F. 195 

Cable, Atlantic 89 

Calhoun, John C. % 302 

Cattle, selling 20 

Centennial Exhibition, 422 

Chalmers, courage of Dr. 264 

Change of pastorate, 55 

a modern necessity, 164 

Changes produced by age, 17 

Channing, Rev. Dr. Ellery 278 

Character, Christian nobility of 88 



446 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



PAGE 

Chase, Chief-justice Salmon P. 127 

Cheney Brothers, J 92 

Child, Hon. Linus 190 

Rev. Dr. Willard 70 

Children of Richard and Irene B. 

Foster, 16, 17 

government of 247 

in heaven, 442 

loss of little 442 

training of 46 

Childs, Mrs. Horace, letter from 42 

Choate, Hon. Rufus 

36, 126, 174, 204, 233, 327 
Choice of the ministry as a profes- 
sion, 29, 110 
Christ, comfort from 87, 228, 230 
in heaven, 443 
our light through 245 
Christian, death of 421 
friendships of 433 
Church in God's care, 102 
building, an ancient 58 
one in a place, 70 
sources of prosperity in a 122 
work, 52 
Church, Rev. John H. 56, 58 
Churches, Congregational, in Lowell, 70 
City, disadvantages of pastorate in 102 
Clark, Rev. DeWitt S. 216, 251 
Rev. James F. 171 
Cleaveland, Rev. Dr. J. P. 70 
College, addresses at 36, 93, 271, 327 
boarding one's self in 28 
commencements, 36, 126, 181 
Dartmouth 10, 13, 25, 36, 126 
friendships in 30, 34 
life in 26, 36 
Williams 103 
Columbus, O., Congregational Church 

in 80 

Commencement at Dartmouth Col- 
lege, 126 
Communion with Christ in heaven, 443 
Communists in France, 370 
Congregational Churches in Lowell, 70 
Conkling, Senator 195, 217, 218 
Consecutiveness of thought 332 
Convention of Y. M. C. A., 149 
Conversation, 306 
value of 359 
of Christians, 394 
Conversion of a young man, 122 
Cooper's Novels, 119 
1 Corinthians 1:21, 327 
Correspondence, neglect in 163 
Corwin, Hon. Thomas 216 
Council, Church 155 
at Washington, D. C, 127" 
Cowper, William 14, 284 
Coquetry, ministerial 77 
Cox, Rev. Dr. S. H. 49 
Credentials of ministers, 54 
Cuba, annexation of 380 
Culture, from books, 305 
Christian, methods of 389 
Cure of intemperance, 320 



Dancing, 

Dartmouth College, 
address at 



161 

10, 13, 25, 36, 126 





PAGE 


Darwinianism, 


385 


Daughter, comfort in a 


87, 132 


Davy, Sir Humphrey 


290 


Day, Rev. Pliny B. 


49 


Day, Pres. Jeremiah 


155 


Dead, the eminent 


172 


Death, 


98 


Christian's calmness in 


438 


enlargement of mind in 


440 


dread of 


432 


hindrances removed at 


441 


of the Christian, 


431 


of a child, 


61,83 


of an adult daughter, 


138 


pain of 


432 


preparations for 


88 


spiritual darkness in 


437 


sudden 


78, 435 


Debating club, 


18,63 


Democratic party, 


174 



Dewey, Nathaniel Wright 30, 34, 77, 193 

Dickens, Charles 186, 198 

Dignity of the ministry, 44 

Discoveries in theology, 340 

Doctor of divinity, title of 103 

Doddridge, Philip 366 

Dogmatism in the pulpit, 332 

Doubt in young men, 244 

in religion, 405 

Duryea, Rev. Dr. Joseph T. 214 
Duties of a minister outside his 

church, 68, 70 

D wight, Rev. Dr. Timothy 155, 405 



Earle, Rev. A. B. 
East Burke, Vt. 
Eaton, Rev. J. M. R. 
Eccentricity undesirable, 
Education under difficulties, 
Edwards, Prof. Bela B. 
Effort to win souls, 
Eliot, George 
Elocutionary practice, 
Eloquence of expiring nations, 33, 36, 
England, prosperity of 
Enlistments in the army, securing 
Emerson, R. W. 
Erskine, Lord Thomas 
Evangelists, 126, 150, 

Events of 1868, 

review of current 
Everett's orations, 
Evils of the ministry, 
Evolution, 

Ex-pastors and pastor, relations of 
Exercise, injury of excessive 
Exodus 2:9, 
Extempore preaching, 



150 
176 

72 
387 
190 

83 
171 
19S 

42 
271 
420 
115 
302 
27S 
165 
144 
195 



385 
221 
130 
276 
117 



Fable of squirrels, 135 

Faculty of originating thought, 99 

Fairbanks Brothers, 192 

Fairfax, Sir Thomas 225 

Faith, power of 328 

gives peace, 412 

in God important to a nation, 371 

Family religion, 46 

Farm life, 19 

Fast, a church 122 

Father, devotion of, to a son, 163 



INDEX. 



447 



PAGE 

Father, loss of a 143 

Fear of man, 67 
Fellowship, Christian, advantages of 392 

in heaven, 442 

Field, Rev. Dr. H. M. 105 

Finney, Prof. Charles G. 126 

Fisher, Rev. Caleb E. 159 

Fishing, 145, 151, 152 

Football, 26 
Foster, Rev. Dr. Eden B. : 

CHARACTERISTICS. 

affections, 247 

aim, singleness of 200 

brothers, interest in his 45, 47, 59 
brothers, influence on his 253 

candor, 258 

charity, 223, 247 

children, anxiety for his 46 

children, love for his 84, 85, 198 

church, love for his 

52, 75, 112, 193, 203, 220 
conversation, powers in 259 

courage, 264 

dependence on his people, 75, 76 
devotion to principle, 256 

eloquence, 267 

emotional nature, 223 

energy, 246 

error, fear of 215 

family, love for 133, 135, 247 

father, relations to his 143 

fishing, love lor 151, 152 

flowers, love for 214, 229 

gardening, interest in 

44, 128, 158, 214 
greatness, 263 

his aim, 200 

home, love for 49 

honor as a minister, 241 

humility, 43, 94, 226, 246, 255 

humor, 259 

ill health, 146, 206, 209 

John-street Church, love for 

112, 193, 203, 220 
John-street Church, relations to 201 
kindness to brother-ministers, 260 
knowledge of civil war, 142 

knowledge of men, 205, 224 

labor, genius for 266 

ministry, love for 45, 209 

nature, interest in 

96, 107, 151, 218, 229 
pear-culture, interest in 129 

parents, love for his 59 

piety, 248, 256 

physical activity, 23 

politics, interest in 43, 71, 242 

self-distrust, 246, 254 

sensationalism, freedom from 200 
singleness of aim 200 

slavery, efforts against 43, 63, 243 
son, relations to his 143, 145, 163 

souls, longings for 47 

spirituality, 389 

style, 204, 256 

sympathy, 220, 224 

temperance, interest in 69, 243 

unction, 225, 240, 403 

unselfishness, 241 



PAGE 

young men, interest in 

45, 110, 216, 244 

EVENTS IN HIS LIFE. 

address at graduation, 33, 36, 271 
address at Dartmouth College,- 

93, 227 
Andover, student at 37 

associate pastor, receives an 188 
associate pastor, relations to 

186, 188, 221 
birth, 10 

boyhood, 17 

Brooklyn, N. Y., invitation to 78 
children, his 41, 60, 83 

college days, 25-36 

Columbus, O., invitation to 80 

conversion, 25 

Dartmouth, commencement at 126 
death, his 230 

death of his daughter Emily, 138 
devotional habits, 38 

dislocation of his arm, 117 

doctor of divinity, made 103 

East Burke, Vt., vacation at 176 
elocution, practice in 42 

engaged to be married, 38, 39 

football, fondness for 26 

friendships in college, 30, 34 

funeral service, 251 

graduating address, 33, 36, 271 

grief at giving up his work, 210 

Henniker, pasotrate at 40-54, 215 
home, early 17 

ill health at Lowell, 

146, 185, 187, 189, 206, 209 
illness at college, 26, 33 

invitations to different churches, 40, 
57, 62, 64, 78, 80, 100, 102, 117, 118, 140 
Jersey City, vacation at 193 

Lawrence, call to 62 

Lowell, first pastorate in 64-102 

Lowell, second pastorate in 142-205 
marriage, 40 

Northampton, invitation to 98 

parentage, 11 

pastor emeritus at Lowell, 205-231 
Pelham, pastorate at 54-64, 215 

Philadelphia, invitations to 78, 117 
physicians, friendship for 226 

preparation for college, 25, 33 

preparation for death, his 88 

promise, early 22, 24 

recreations in boyhood, 18, 20 

reminiscences on his birth-day, 215 
resignation of pastorates, 

100, 140, 201 
revivals in his churches, 53, 81, 120 
St. Johnsbury, invitation to 57 

Saratoga, at 48, 125 

scholarship in college, 25, 26 

sickness, last 227 

sing, learning to 36 

slavery, early efforts against 43, 63 
success in Lowell, 79 

support, moral, of his people, 75 
teacher in Sabbath School, 28, 32 
teacher at Putney, Vt., 28 

teacher at Pembroke, N. H., 36 

teacher at Concord, N. H., 36 



448 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



PAGE 

temperance address, making 38 
vacation of six months, 175 

vacation, year of 189, 191, 192 

war, civil, influence in 115 

Washington, D. C., at . 49, 127 

West Springfield, pastorate at 

102-142, 215 

HIS PROFESSIONAL AND LITERARY 
WORK. 

efforts for souls, 47, 75, 220 

extra-parochial work, 68, 155, 248 
inquiry meetings, 74 

labors in the ministry, 42, 53, 66, 67, 
95, 99, 109, 148, 149, 175, 185, 239 
letter-writing, methods of 163, 235 
literary tastes, 232 

newspaper articles, 68, 69 

newspaper-clippings, 179, 227, 235 
public efforts, his chief 248 

published sermons and address- 
es, his 250 
reading, biographical, 88, 198, 216 
reading, books for 38, 59, 146, 198 
reading, nabits of 232 
reading, philosophical, 148, 210 
sermons at installations, 66, 155 
sermons on temperance, 69 
sermonizing, method of 98, 224, 230 



sermon criticized, 


159 


Foster family, the : 




Rev. Eden B. (See above) 


Rev. W. C. 


16, 121 


Capt. Daniel 


16, 127 


Sarah 


16, 228 


Major Charles 


16, 127 


Rev. Davis 


16, 22, 228 


Rev. Roswell 


16 


Rev. R. Baxter 


16, 23, 127 


Edward 


61 


Rev. Amos 


17, 24, 254 


BelaE. 


83 


Charles A. D. birth of 


60 


Edward P. death of 


61 


Emily E. 41, 


84, 131, 138 


Mrs. Irene B. 


13,16 


Richard 


11, 143 


Foster, John 


285 


France in 1873, 


369, 377 


Franklin, Benjamin 


302 


Free- thinking, immorality of 


188 


Friends, loss of 


139 


Friendships of the Christian, 


433 


Garfield, Pres. James A. 


212, 227 


assassination of 


218, 219 


Garden at Lowell, 


158 


at West Springfield, 


128 


Garland, Dr. George W. 


131, 138 


Garrison, William Lloyd 


73, 174 


General Assembly of Presbyterian 


Church, 


49 


Genius, 


353 


German writers, 


184 


Gladstone, Hon. William E. 


212, 267 


Goodwin, Rev. Dr. E. P. 


184 


Goodell, Rev. Dr. William 


198 


Gossip, 


222 


Graham, Mrs. Isabella 


198 


Grant, Pres. U. S. 


174, 212 



PAGE 

Greatness, true 364 

Greeley, Hon. Horace 11, 174 

Greene, Rev. Dr. J. M., memorial 

address of 262 

Griffin, Rev. Dr. E. D. 126, 334, 405 

Guizot, 212 



171 
40 



396 . 



Guthrie, Rev. Dr. Thomas 

Hale, Rev. Dr. E. E. 
Hall, Rev. Dr. John 

Rev. Robert 
Hamilton, Sir William 
Hammond, Rev. E. P. 
Hanks, Rev. S. W. 65 

Hanover, N. H., description of 
Happiness in the Christian life, 
Harvard, John 
Hawks, Rev. Dr. Theron H. 
Hayes, Pres. R. B. 
Health as affected by alcohol, 

duty of having 

ill, in early life, 

relation of the mind to 
Heaven, children in 

communion with Christ in 

fellowship of saints in 

hope of 

nature of 
Hedge, Prof. F. H. 
Henniker, N. H., described, 
Henry, Patrick 

education of 
Heredity, influence of 
High-schuols vs. academies, 
History, 

Hodge's Theology, 
Holiness in the life, 
Holt, Dr. Daniel 
Holmes, Rev. John Milton 
Holy Ghost, influence of 
Home, joys of 

love for 

made attractive, 

study, 

the Christian, sermons on 
Homer, Rev. Bradford 
Hopkins, Pres. Mark 103, 154, 

Rev. Dr. Samuel 105, 

House, purchase of a 
Howard, Gen. O. O. 
Hunting adventure, 
Huntingdon, Lady, and her friends, 

Ide, Rev. Dr. 
Idling in vacation, 
Illustrative power of great men, 
Imagination, appeals to the 
Immersion, discussions on 
Immorality of free-thinkers, 
Independence in the minister, 

of thought, 
Infidel speculations, 
Infidelity, causes of 398 

Inquiry-meetings, 74 

Installation sermons, 66, 155 

Insincerity in the pulpit denied, 213 
Intellect ruined by alcohol, 324 

Irving, Washington 193, 288 

Isaiah 48 : 18, 403 

Italy from 1848 to 1874, 374 



354 

213 

214 
285 
302 
126 
251 

10 
133 
302 
105 
212 
317 
131 
155 

86 
442 
443 
442 

89 
442 
184 
,41 
366 
278 
177 

41 
294 
216 
414 
226 
193 
398 

49 

85 
309 
190 
148 
193 
182 
162 
147 
149 

21 
132 

155 

89 
354 
281 
150 

188 

68 

337 

387 



INDEX. 



449 



PAGE 

Jersey City, impressions of 193 

John 5:35, 251 

John-street Congregational Church, 

Lowell, 65, 187 

Johnson, Pres. Andrew 212 

Jude20:21, 389 



Kansas, troubles in 
Kimball Union Academy, 
Kingsley, Rev. Charles 



71 

25 

171 

192 



Labor and capital, relations of 

mental vm 

value of 353 

Lathrop, Rev. Dr. Joseph 105 

Laymen, religious addresses of 149 

Lawrence, Mass., Central Church in 62 

Lectures at Teachers' Institutes, 119 

Lecture, power of the 359 

Letter to a little child, 92 

Letter-writing, 84,85,235 

on Sunday, 87 

Letters concerning E. B. Foster : From 

Bagg, J. Newton 141 

Barrett, Hon. James 34, 94 

Bartlett, Pres. S. C. 27 

Berry, Rev. Augustus 63 

Childs, Mrs. Horace 42 

Foster, Rev. Davis 22 

Foster, Rev. R. Baxter 23 

Lord, Pres. Nathan 54 

Lowell parishioner, a 199 

Seabury, Rev. J. B. 222 

Stevens, Hon. George 203 

Letters of E. B. Foster : To 

his brothers, 40, 45, 47, 59 

a class-mate, 144 

a cousin, 17, 18 

his youngest daughter, 91, 151, 176, 
177, 179, 190, 193, 195, 198, 209, 214, 215, 
217, 218, 219, 233, 236. 
Dewey, N. Wright 31 

his daughter Emily, 33, 68, 82, 85, 86, 
87, 88, 93, 106, 127, 131, 132, 133. 
a friend, 190 

John-street Church, 201, 229 

ministers, 186, 214, 245 

a nephew, 236 

his parents, 15, 59, 60, 61, 66, 71, 80, 108 
his parishioners, 75, 102, 112, 171, 
179, 189, 206, 207, 220. 
representatives of churches, 78, 79 
his sister, 37 

his son, 67, 69, 72, 89, 95, 96, 97, 100, 
101, 103, 106, 115, 116,117, 121, 122, 123, 
124, 126, 129, 130, 138, 145, 148, 149, 154, 
155, 162, 163, 166, 170, 175, 176, 178, 181, 
182, 185, 187, 188,191,192,209, 210, 212, 
213, 219, 235, 239, 241, 243, 244. 



those out of Christ, 


47, 


75, 171 


his uncle, 




24,28 


his wife, 46, 48, 49, 51, 


55, 56 


85, 89, 


104, 121, 126, 167, 193. 






young men, 




110 


Liberalism, 




215 


dangerous, 




375 


License or prohibition, 




217 


Life compared to a stream, 




90, 133 


reflections on 




38, 95 


uncertainty of 




436 



PAGE 

Light from a good man, 252 

Lincoln, Pres. Abraham 212 

election of 97, 175 

nomination of 367 

Lists of biographies, 217, 234 

Living theology, a, the orator's 

power 93, 227 

Loneliness, 133 

Lord, Rev. John 193 

Lord, Pres. Nathan 54, 55, 67, 1H 

letter from 54 

Love for family, 91, 133 

for home, 85 

of a pastor for his people, 

power of 

parental 

to Christ, 

towards God, 
Lowell, Mass., calls to 

Congregational Churches in 

description of 

first pastorate in 

second pastorate in 

John-street Church in 

pastors in 



62, 



196 
85 
123 
389 
140 
70 

65, 389, 401 
64-102 
142-205 
65, 187 
70, 259 



Macaulay, 193 

Trevelyan's life of 227 

Machinery, influence on mind, 303 

Maine, temperance in 322 

Mann. Horace, as a worker, 267 

Manning, Rev. Dr. Jacob 214 

Martineau, Rev. James 170 

Massachusetts and Maine, character 

of 223 

Maurice, Rev. J. F. D. 170 

Memory, instances of 158 

Merrimac River, the 58, 404, 406 

Mill, John Stuart 384 

Millerism, 53 

Mind, bent of the • 205 

Ministers competing with the press, 369 

dissatisfaction with 162 

lives of 9 

meetings, 70, 159 

Ministry, ability of the modern 212 

amount of work in 239 

blessedness of 45, 51, 120, 209 

call to 111 

choice of 29 

consecration in 241 

coquetry in 77 

dignity of 44 

ethics of 102 

evils in 29 

extra-parochial work in 69 

grumbling in 204 

honor in 241 

independence in 68 

needs the moral support of the 

people, 75 

no insincerity in 213 

pain of being laid aside from 210 
political responsibility of 242 

power in, through Christ, 245 

responsibility of 45, 56, 184 

sacrifices in 111 

troubles in 161 

youth in 163 

Mitchel, Gen. O. M. « 116 



450 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER. 



Moderate drinking, 
Moose Mountain, 
Morris, William 
Murray, W. H. H. 
Mystery of the sea, 
of religion, 



PAGE 
313 

10, 18, 20, 21, 176 

183 

152, 161, 171 

409 

410 



Naming a child, 61 
Needs of the republic, 429 
Netherlands, courage of the 377 
Nettleton, the evangelist, 126 
Newspapers, estimate of 195, 298 
clippings from 227, 234 
New-year's sermon, 172 
New York and New England, one- 
ness of 195 
Novel reading, 298 

Object lessons, importance of 276 

Ocean, the 151 

scenery of 145 
Oneness of New York and New 

England, 195 

Original sin, 177 

Originating thought, power of 99 

Overwork, 99 

Pacific Mills, Lawrence, Mass., 192 

Parental love, 84 
Parishioners' influence on pastor's 

usefulness, 75, 76 

Pastoral calls, 74, 114 

Pastorate in city or country, 102 

pain of terminating a 100, 101 

seeking a 55, 56, 57, 102 

Pastors in Lowell, 70, 259 

in West Springfield, 105 

Patience in the preacher, 347 

Patriotism, demands of 430 

Peace of God, 404 

Pear culture, 129 

trees, 158 

Pelham, N. H., described, 57 

Pembroke Academy, 36, 39, 45 

Pemberton Mills disaster, 98 

Pen paralysis, 100 

Phelps, Prof. Austin 214 

Philosophy, 210 

books in religious 146, 148 

reading in 301 

Phillips, Hon. Wendell 73, 194 

Phi Beta Kappa Society, 26 

Pierce, Pres. Frank 52, 72, 212 

Pinneo, Dea. Oramel 40 

Pleasures of study, 37 

Poetry, 296 

Political sermons, 71 

Politicians, methods of 352 

Potter, Rev. J. D. 165, 167 

Power in the pulpit, sources of 327 

Prayer, public 240 

meetings, value of 194 

Preaching, criticisms of 131 

influence of 32 

to a few, 183 

to a new congregation, 164 

old truths, 389 

Presidential contest, 90 

Presidents of the United States, 31? 

Press, influence of the 307 



PAGE 

Press, minister competing with the 369 

Prisoners of hope, 168 

Progress in theology, 

Prohibition, 

Prosperity, from the Bible, 

of England and America, 
Providence, in men's lives, 
Psalm 119:9. 

143:5,10 
Pulpit, use of the 

rights of the 

sources of power in 
Puritans, love among the 



340 

217, 321 

417 

420 

366 

417 

369 

70 

71 

327 

219 



Rangeley Lakes, the 

Rationalism in religion, 

Read, what to 

Reading, 59, 88, 132, 146, 292, 

advantages of 

dangerous 

in the home, 

in old age, 

its departments, 

methods of 

topics of 179, 

philosophical 

universality of 
Reasoning, religious 
Rebuke of evils, 
Repairs of a church, 
Republic, needs of the 
Responsibilities of ministry, 45, 56, 

of the age, 

of Christians, 

of citizens, 
Review of current events, 

of the year 1873, t 
Reviews, 

Revision of the New Testament, 
Revivalists, 126, 150, 

Revival at Concord, N. H., 

Henniker, N. H., 

John-street Church, Lowell, 81, 

West Springfield, 

methods in 

systematic visitation in 

church fast in 

subjects of sermons in 
River, description of a 
Robertson, Rev. F. W. 
Robinson, Rev. Dr. Edward 
Ruin of the intellect from alcohol, 
Rum selling, 
Ruskin, Beauties of 
Russia, 



182 
219 
59 
312 
303 
300 
308 
310 
293 
232 
182 
148 
292 
123 
161 



184 
406 
413 
429 
195 



218 
165 

48 

53 
165 
120 
121 
121 
122 
122 

90 
214 
112 
324 
315 

90 
195 



Sabbath in France, 371 

political importance of 371 

observance of 87, 370 

Sabbath-school, 190 

commemorative service of 262 

Saints of God, 193 

Salaries of country ministers, 59 

Salt, Sir Titus 192 

Salvation, joy of 122, 132 

the ffreat 148 

2 Sam. 3:38, 350 

Saratoga Springs, 48, 125, 156 

Scenery, descriptions of 

85, 89, 90, 153, 167, 176, 178, 180 



INDEX. 



451 



PAGE 

Scenery, influence of 134 

Scholar, the dull 36, 119, 276 

Scott, Rev. Dr. Thomas 291 

Walter 186, 366 

Gen. Winfield 259 

Seabury, Rev. J. B. 184, 186, 221 

letter from 222 

Secret societies, 161 

Sensationalism in the pulpit, 340, 344 

Separation from friends, 433 

Sermon writing, success in 160 

Sermons, choice volumes of 160 

courses of 109 

for New-year, 172 

in revivals, 122 

installation 66 

methods of preparing 95, 236 

on temperance, 69, 185 

plans of 66, 68, 98 

preaching old 238 

political 71 

series of 109, 110 

standard of 99 

subjects of 66, 67, 88, 95, 98, 109, 110, 

122, 144, 145, 148, 160, 184, 185 

subjects of series of 

66 67, 109, 110, 148, 192 

texts of 64, 67, 98 

to young men, 109 

to young people, 66 

Sermonizing, methods in 236 

interest in 196 

standard of 98 

Seward, Secretary 97 

Shakespeare, 297 

Simplicity of aim and style, 341 

Sickness not to be escaped, 435 

Sin, victory over 438 

Sing, learning to 37 

Singing in the family, 36 

Skepticism, 160, 170 

of the age, 215 

Skiouri, the squirrel, 136 

Slavery, 43 

desolation produced by 50 

weak argument for 50 

Smiley, Miss Sarah F. 170 

Smith, Pres. A. D. 154 

Rev. Moses 121 

Social gatherings of young people, 17 

Souls, efforts for 47, 74 

Southworth, Deacon Edward 125 

Spain in 1873, 378 

Sprague, Rev. Dr. W. B. 105 

Spencer, Rev. Dr. I. S. 78 

Spring, Rev. Dr. Gardiner 102, 164 

Squirrels, fable of 135 

Stearns. Frazer, life of 116 

Stevens, Hon. George, letter from 203 

Street, Rev. Dr. Owen 70 

funeral address of 251 

Storrs, Rev. Dr. Henry M. 81 

Rev. Dr. R. S. * 164 

Rev. Dr. R S., jr. 112, 161 

Stuart, Prof. Moses 220, 341 

Study, advantages of 86 

Student-life, privilege of 96 

Subjects of sermons, 66, 67, 88, 95, 98, 

109, 110, 144, 145, 148, 160, 184, 185 

in a revival, 122 



PAGE 

Suffering, advantages of 88 

Sumner, Hon. Charles 172, 350 

as a lecturer, 350 

assault on 71 

his rupture with the republican 

party, ' 173 

" Sunny-side " experience, 105 

Sunrise, description of a 178 

Superintendent of Sabbath-school, 220 

Swain, Rev. Dr. Leonard 193 

Switzerland, school system of 377 

Taine's English Literature, 164 
Talmage, Rev. Dr. T. DeWitt 161 
Taylor, Dr. Nathaniel 112, 288 
Jeremy 354 
Rev. Dr. William M. 214 
Teachers' Institutes, 119 
Temperance, 149, 243, 313, 326 
labors for, in the church, 52 
woman's work in 315 
Thackeray, 198 
Theatres, 170 
Theology, delight of 209 
discourses on 340 
interest of 335 
the orator's power, 93 
progress in 340 
Thompson. Rev. Dr. J. P. 81, 128, 161 
Thought, in the preacher, consec- 
utive 332 
independent 337 
1 Timothy 4 : 13, 292 
Tortoise, eggs of 92 
Towne, Rev. Joseph H. 48, 70 
Towns on the Albany Railroad, 90 
Troubles in the ministry, 161 
Truth, loyalty to 345 
Turkev, 196 
in 1873, 381 
Tyler, Rev. Dr. Bennet 91 
Pres. John 212 
Tyng, Rev. Dr. S. H. 102, 183 



Uncertainty of life, 
United pervice in Lowell, 
United States, prosperity of 

Vacation, how to spend 
Van Lennep, Mrs. 
Verne, Jules 
Victory over sin, 
Virginius, seizure of the 



433 

70 

420 

89, 183 
198 
183 
438 
378 



War to be avoided, 379 

War, the Civil 115 

apprehension of 97 

religious dangers of 375 

its influence on choice of presi- 
dents, 212 
Warner, Dr. F. A. 226 
Warren, Rev. William H. 216 
Washington, Mount 169 
D. C, first church in 127 
George 302, 366 
Watt, James 2S2 
Wayland, Rev. Dr. Francis 162, 405 
Wellington, courage of the Duke of 264 
Wedding party, a 146 
Webster, Hon. Daniel 64, 160, 174, 278 



452 



MEMORIAL OF REV. DR. E. B. FOSTER, 





PAGE 


West Springfield, church in 


190 


described 


104 


pastors in 


105 


pastorate in 


102 


Wetherbee, Dea. Asa 


112 


White, Hon. Joseph 


119, 190 


Whitefield, death of 


408 


White Mountains, scenery in 167 


,169,180 


journey among 


137 


Wilson, Hon. Henry 


149 


his reading, 


299 


Williams College, 


96, 103 


Winthrop, Gov. John 


212 


Wirt, William 


302 


Woman, 


170 


her character and mission, 


213 


sermon on 


68,95 



Woman, her work in temperance, 
Women, eminent Christian 

of the Bible, 
Wood, Rev. Dr. A. A. 
Wordsworth's Ode to Immortality 
Wright, Rev. Royal N. 



PAGE 
315 

132 
110 

108 
228 
31 



York, Me., scenery at 144, 151, 153 

Young men, 163, 244 

debating clubs ol 18 

labors of 19 

Men's Christian Association,* 

Convention of 149 

Young people, series of sermons to 66 
social gatherings of 17 

Youth, influence with 366 



7* 






